With the new Eagle TIme schedule, some students are confused about what is happening and why students are now forced to follow a rotating schedule that cycles every two weeks. The new Eagle Time schedule is meant to help students get help with their classes. The way Eagle Time works is on Mondays you will go to your advisory class as normal, but then starting on Tuesday depending on what week it is, students will go to their 1st/5th period class then on Wednesday you go to 2nd/6th then on Thursday you will go to 3rd/7th and on Friday you go to 4th/8th. Campus administrators say this system was set in place because of problems with students skipping advisory and not using Eagle Time for its intended purpose. 

      However, students have said this new system has some major flaws in how it works and how it is trying to achieve its goal. This new system may even get in the way of its main goal of providing tutoring when students need it. For example,if a student needs help in their 3rd-period class they might have to wait two weeks to get the necessary help they require, depending on the timing. When Akins followed the Flexible Instruction Time model and even when students were allowed to get passes to visit a teacher’s room during Advisory periods, we did not have this problem. Students could generally get the help they needed much faster and conveniently than the current system. This is a major problem that can directly affect students’ ability to get the help that they need. According to the results of an online survey conducted by The Eagle’s Eye,the majority of the students who were surveyed, 81.8%, said they do not think this system is good. The majority of students responded that they do not get the tutoring they require. The survey asked students if there have been improvements since the implementation of the new rotation system. One student acknowledged that it did appear that there were fewer kids in the halls during Eagle Time. However, they said they were frustrated with the restrictions of the rotation schedule and the lack of passes to teachers when tutoring is needed urgently.With many people saying the same things regarding the new Eagle Time system the results have come back with the vast majority of students saying that they are not in favor of the new schedule and think that it interferes with them getting the necessary help. With the required rotation system, getting tutoring help can feel like it takes a happy coincidence in order to get the tutoring students when they need it.

      Although there are many changes we could make to this system we have to ask, why was the system changed in the first place? Administrators have said they were motivated to change the policy because there were too many people remaining in the hallway during advisory and too many students, skipping advisory altogether. Administrators have said that students who need tutoring should talk to their teachers and ask them what other times are available besides Eagle Time. Administrators have recently asked teachers to offer one hour of additional tutoring outside of class time per week before or after school. Assistant Principal Melinda Van Horn said that the important thing right now is base-level accountability, including knowing where any student is on campus at any given time.However, we need another way of fixing this problem in a way that does not limit students’ ability to get tutoring when they need it.. To ensure that students do not skip Eagle Time we could have faculty, staff and administrators stationed at doors to ensure students cannot skip. Although some administrators might say that is unrealistic, we should not be limiting students’ ability to get tutoring. The prior system that allowed students to get passes to go to teachers’ classrooms during Advisory had its flaws, but it did its job of ensuring that the students who needed help were guaranteed to get it. With its prior flaws, it had great upside, giving students a place to be while being able to receive passes so if they needed help they required it.