‘Like day’ scheduling next week will interfere with Career Center finals

Study+Time%3A+Senior+Jake+Gallagher+studies+in+the+media+center+on+Tuesday%2C+Dec.+10.+Finals+week+begins+next+Monday%2C+Dec.+16.

Study Time: Senior Jake Gallagher studies in the media center on Tuesday, Dec. 10. Finals week begins next Monday, Dec. 16.

Brittany Cornelison
December 12, 2013

[heading]Students may miss up to 50 minutes of RBHS class for the CACC and vice versa[/heading] With finals week beginning in four days, students are preparing themselves for the many various tests yet to come. However, now students may not have as much class time to prepare for these exams due to the scheduling that comes along with this week.
From Dec. 16 – Dec. 20, RBHS students will be following a “like day” schedule. This means that classes will be nine minutes longer and there will be no Bruin Block. In the past, “like day” scheduling was used to account for class time lost to assemblies, but now with finals taking place, “like days” are used to create extra time for preparation. Assistant Principal David Bones said that this schedule is what the RBHS administration believes will work most effectively for teachers and students alike.
“For this semester, this is what we are going to do with the like day schedule all week,” Bones said. “You know basically the idea is to give the classes more time to … review and prepare for finals and give finals, that’s really the reasoning.”
Study Time: Senior Jake Gallagher studies in the media center on Tuesday, Dec. 10. Finals week begins next Monday, Dec. 16.
Study Time: Senior Jake Gallagher studies in the media center on Tuesday, Dec. 10. Finals week begins next Monday, Dec. 16. Photo by Maribeth Eiken. 
Though this will increase class time for teachers preparing their students for final exams, it doesn’t tailor specifically to the schedules of students who are involved in classes at the Columbia Area Career Center. These students will be missing anywhere from 15 – 50 minutes of their RBHS classes in order to be in their CACC classes, or losing time from the CACC to go to RBHS classes. Deciding what class the student will attend will be up to the instructor and the student.
“That’ll be done on a case by case basis, with the student and teachers to determine what’s best for the student,” Bones said. “We always think of the Career Center and know they have a challenge to balance all their feeder schools, obviously including Rock Bridge, so we do kind of try as much as possible to take their schedule into account.”
RBHS junior Mikayla Rippey, a student in the Professions in Healthcare class at CACC, said with “like days” she doesn’t get as much information as other students in her class who come from other schools. Her instructor had to cancel their nursing clinicals because the times in which students from various schools would make it to class was varied.
“I don’t like having to miss clinicals and not have the extra time to prepare for class. And we still have to start at the same time anyway some people will get the extra time while others, who can’t come in as early, aren’t going to get as much work done,” Rippey said. “I know that we have shortened class periods, so we’re probably going to miss review days and extra time to prepare for our finals.”
Though the like days are set in stone for this round of finals, it could change next semester according to Bones.
“I think they definitely should change it,” Rippey said. “They should just get rid of like days altogether because I just hate them in general, it just complicates things and throws our whole schedule off shift.”
By Brittany Cornelison