ZCHS extends school day

By Ben Woodson/Times Sentinel writer

April 30, 2008 04:57 pm

— The school day may seem like it takes forever to high school students, but next year it will take nine minutes longer.
The Zionsville Community Schools Board of Trustees extended the schedule at the request of ZCHS Principal Chris Willis to fit in time for a 52 minute seminar class every second Thursday.
“There were some things that we wanted to happen, but they didn’t have a place to live,” Willis said.
The seminar gives the school a place to put those topics that don’t fit into an existing class or can’t be made into its own class, Willis said. Examples would be sessions on applying for college, teen decision-making and financial literacy. It could also be a venue for teachers to have guest speakers come in, and talk to all of their classes at one time instead of having the speaker say the same thing four or five times.
The school needed to add the extra nine minutes because the state requires an average of 250 minutes per week for each class, Willis said, and taking the time out of the day for the seminar put the normal classes below that. The day will start five minutes earlier at 7:25 a.m., and end four minutes later at 2:40 p.m.
On seminar days, each class will be shorter and the seminar will be wedged into the middle of the day.
Students will have a choose of which seminar they want to attend, Willis said, and also have the option of attending a supervised study hall. It will be a quiet study period with no group interaction.
“We are trying to make that supervised study not very attractive. ... Hopefully we encourage them to want to pick those other opportunities that we are providing,” Willis said.
The school will offer the study period because students active in extracurricular activities may need study time, Willis said. Also, he feels if students are forced to attend a seminar they might become disruptive.