There are many that think that Bear River’s current bell schedule is flawed and has room to improve, and there has been a significant push within the administration to get it to change.
According to History teacher Matthew MacDonald, discussions have been started to try to change things around.
MacDonald said, “We had a meeting earlier in the year with a couple teachers from Nevada Union, and a couple teachers from Bear River, and then members of the district, and we looked at the possibilities, and talked to see what their goals were and our goals were.”
Many different schedules were proposed.
“A lot of the changes are kind of out of our control … The main reasons are pretty evident … Regardless of what that is, that’s going to be a big challenge. There’s been some initial discussion about creating an exploratory committee to look at different options, whether that be a seven period day, an eight period day, a four period block semester type deal, or what we currently have and just have Nevada Union adopt that.”
There are different reasons that some think the current schedule needs to be replaced.
One reported issue is that the Nevada Union and Bear River schedules do not align.
“There has been a push to get our whole district on the same schedule,” explained MacDonald. “If Nevada Union and Bear River, the two big comprehensives, are on the same schedule, it opens more options for students … we could do satellite classes … students could be video conferenced into classes at Nevada Union.”
It’s a common complaint that Bruin Times are wasted, and that people just use them to mess around and not get work done. Many solutions were proposed, including making them shorter, moving them to earlier in the day, or even eliminating them entirely.
Some Bruins had concerns of how this would conflict with sports.
“When you have sports, it’s super hard to go until 3:24,” said Junior Grace Billingsley. “Bruin Time is super helpful, because then you can get out early, and you can get to your sporting events without having to miss academic classes.”
Billingsley also described how helpful Bruin Times were to her.
“Using the time that I have, I go talk to the teachers that I feel I need to talk to,” said Billingsley. “And if I don’t need help, I go study in the library so that I can effectively get work done in the quiet, without anyone bothering me.”
There were also mixed views among Bruins on whether or not more periods would be a good thing.
“If we were to have more periods, we could take more classes,” said sophomore Helen Sands. “That would fulfill our requirements for things like UCs and out of state private colleges.”
Others like Junior Jenna Laplante disagreed and thought that seven periods would be annoying.
“Some people don’t want to go to UC’s and do all of that, so having seven periods would just make it more annoying for other students,” said Laplante.
However, according to Principal Christopher Roberts, it’s very unlikely that any action will be taken either this year or the next.
“As far as a new schedule goes, we are most likely not moving to a new schedule next year,” he said. “We’ve had talks about it, but I don’t think the district is ready to make that move.”
MacDonald agreed with Principal Roberts.
“Really, there’s nothing that’s going to take place in the near future, nothing’s happening next year,” he said. “It’s a slow process, and there’s a lot of financial cost involved. The district is really looking at what’s best for our students.”
