Ever since hybrids and opens have been introduced at Prior Lake High School, Campus Supervisors as well as students have struggled to understand and follow rules based on when students can leave.

A hybrid is a class that seniors and sometimes juniors can have that only requires them to be in class two to three days a week. When the students do not have a class, they usually have an assignment given that has a due date later that night or the next day.   This is in a sense is an independent work where students do not have class but have have tasks to complete. Hybrids are meant to be different from the traditional open period.

“Students are allowed two open periods a year starting junior year,” Mrs. Walsh a campus supervisor said. These opens are a privilege and should be used to help students with their homework load so they do not have as much to do at home. When talking to students athletes it was discovered that these open periods make a huge difference. “When we have competitions on school nights, open periods are a nice thing to fall back on if we do not get all of our school work done,” Gabbie Keeran from the Dance Team said.

The problem with both of these “open” hours is that kids are not respecting the rules of them.

There has been great controversy regarding why students that have hybrids are allowed to leave and why students who have opens are not allowed to leave. Campus supervisor Mrs. Walsh kindly explained that when you sign up for a hybrid class you as well as your parents make an agreement that wherever you go during your hybrid, the school is not responsible for you. “It is completely opposite when it comes to open periods,” Walsh states. As for opens, the school is 100% responsible for you and if you were to leave and something bad happened to you, the school would be held responsible.

Many students have a hard time following this rule and leave anyway. The school has offered a compromise- if you are given a first or sixth hour open and if your parent/guardian signs a waiver, you are allowed to sleep in or go home after fifth hour. “I still think that if you have a free hour you should be able to do whatever you want to do during it, even if that means you are leaving campus,” Kaitlyn Jenkins said.

Some students, as well as faculty members, have expressed that they believe these rules should be flipped. When a student is told that they are allowed to leave campus, they will. The only time this is allowed is during hybrid classes when students should be working on the assignment they were assigned. “The system may work better if students with opens were allowed to leave and students with hybrids were not allowed to leave, then students would finish their hybrid assignments and students with opens wouldn’t just sit in a pod for 50 minutes,” Gabbie Keeran said.

Controversy with this topic could go on and on, but as of now students with hybrids are allowed to leave campus and students with opens are not. It will be interesting to see if these rules change in the near future of if the school will stick to the current rules.