The change in laker time threw a wrench into everyone’s schedules, students and faculty alike. I myself have my own individual opinions on the new change, but why form an opinion based on simply the outcome and not the story behind it. I’m here to provide you with the story that lead to the final decision straight from Dr. Bezek himself.

When did the idea to change the laker time first surface?

Dr. B: Sometime in the fall we were looking what we could do differently. Because we’ve been doing laker time for 2 years, and we’ve been doing it the same way. We were looking at different options and we thought hey, what about we change the day? We could see if we could split it between the days and give kids 2 opportunities to meet with teachers even if It’s a different day.

Who eventually made the final decision to make the change?

Dr. B: Any decision like that is usually brought to our building leadership team. It’s department reps from each department. Most of it is our administrative team so myself and the vice principal.

Who originally came up with idea?

Dr. B: It was kind of a team effort. Some people thought about putting it in the middle of the day. We were just looking at different ideas and how other schools do things.

What was your thought process behind the idea?

Dr. B: You know mine was let’s try something different, we’ve been doing the same thing for a while and there are some good things and some annoying things about it. The only bad thing I’ve heard is some people say, oh in hour isn’t a long enough time if you have big test or something. On the plus side people now have 2 times a week to check in.

Was there a specific event that finally pushed everyone to want the change?

Dr. B: No because it’s not permanent. We said we were going to check back in probably this quarter or at the end of the year. We’ll decide what we want to do for next fall. So we could go back or we could do something different. It was just getting kind of stale and we thought let’s give people two times to check in. And for the people that weren’t using the time an hour seemed like a really long time for those that were just hanging out.

Can you please list at least 3 reasons as to why you believe this change would be beneficial?

Dr. B: I think splitting it up allows you to see teachers two times a week is the first reason. I think only having it for half an hour for those that are not using the time helped a little bit because an hour unstructured gets a little unruly sometimes. I think those would be the main ones. If I had a third, I think the third would be that sometimes kids felt pressured to wait because only half the teachers were available each day so sometimes you had to wait every other week to see a teacher. Now you can see those teachers every week.

Can you please list at least 3 reasons that may have stopped you from pushing for the change?

Dr. B: I think a hesitation would be the hour long tests. If somebody had an hour long test rather than a half an hour, I think that’s one. Somebody just pointed out to me that now every other day there’s a different schedule. You have the regular schedule Monday and then the laker schedule Tuesday. It’s like oh what’s the schedule today?

Many students have expressed their distaste for the new laker time. What is your response to that backlash?

Dr. B: I think let’s give it a shot and we’ll see. We’ll probably survey everybody at the end teacher’s and staff, you know do we like it do we not like it? So it’s not permanent. I think I even said in the email I said were going to try this out and see if we like it. I would also say it hasn’t been a normal start to the semester. We’ve had snow days, we’ve had other stuff going on. We still have to get into step.  

What did you expect the outcome of this change to be?

Dr. B: I’m not surprised with the way people have reacted. People don’t like things to change. I think the students feel as if they are losing the hour but It’s the same amount of change just over two days. I also thought it would foster some dialogue and I thought it would make people value what we had. I think people may have been taking it for granted. I also don’t think anybody is real indifferent. They either really like it or hate it.

Do you think that the change had been beneficial?

Dr. B: The jury’s still out. I’m not sold on it. If it comes back and nobody likes it then we can always change back.

Have you seen any progress since the change was made?

Dr. B: We haven’t pulled any data yet, so I couldn’t tell you. We haven’t yet taken a look at behavior differences or It’s change on grades. Anecdotally some of the behavior such as people screwing around during laker time at the end of the semester, people were sometimes getting into trouble. And we haven’t seen as much of that.

This article is not meant to be a persuasive article but more of an informational one. You can form your own opinion based on his answers. I for one still believe that the Wednesday laker time is the best option, but that’s just my opinion.