Every year, students look forward to the long weekend that Memorial Day provides, and seniors look at it as the mark of their final week. With the new schedule change, students do not get the Friday before Memorial Day off this year; this change was made to compensate for the lost hours from excessive snow days.
Seniors are most upset by this because it falls right in “Senior Week,” which is a spirit week for seniors to go out with a bang on their last full week of school. The primary day the schedule change affects is senior skip day, the unofficial day nearly all seniors take off to have fun with their friends outside of school. A lot of seniors plan a trip to places like Cedar Point, or something similar, that normally can’t be done during the weekday.

The seniors have made the Friday before Memorial Day an unannounced extra senior skip day, with most of them claiming they will be called out on both Thursday, the original skip day, and Friday, the newly added day.
Not only does the extra day mess up the normal order of things, but if 75% of the students aren’t in attendance, the day doesn’t count. This could potentially add more days to the end of the school year, or result in loss of funding.
Furthermore, in addition to messing up the students’ schedules, the extra day also alters their families’ plans. Most families plan to go up north, or take a similar vacation, for the long Memorial Day weekend, and they often leave that Friday.
The student body as a whole has not taken kindly to the extra day. Even students who aren’t seniors have mentioned not coming, as well, but low attendance could mean an extra day that cuts into their summer. Even teachers have either a movie or something easy planned because they expect such a low attendance rate on that Thursday and Friday. Most classes will have a “ghost-town” appearance on these two days.
Teachers are also affected by this extra day; if their children are in a elementary or junior high, or a different district, they most likely have plans on the day we were supposed to have off. There’s a high chance there will be a lot of substitute teachers on this day.
Needless to say, the district wanted to make it up so they could reach the amount of time that students are in class so as to not affect their funding from the state. As always, money is pretty much the deciding factor.
All around, people aren’t happy with this additional day, one that most people made plans around because they originally had it off. The attendance rate will be low, and the participation from those in class will be even lower.
With projected low rates, it’ll be interesting to see if we need another make-up day for our make-up day.