Point: Predicting the pitfalls of the new WS/FCS calendar

Olivia Stubbs

Features Editor

We’ve heard about it, we’ve seen the changes, so let’s talk about it: the new WS/FCS calendar for the 2024-2025 school year.

In January, the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Board of Education voted on a new calendar for the upcoming school year. This calendar includes multiple alterations from previous years, but the most glaring is the two weeks-earlier start date to the school year. While at first glance, this may seem like a minor tweak, it really does change everything. This calendar upheaves how our students are used to going about the school year, so it has repercussions in all areas. So, how will this change affect students at R.J. Reynolds?

First of all, in the transition between our current calendar and the new one, our summer will be cut short. Before the current school year, our summer break was eleven weeks long, but this summer will be only nine weeks, stealing fourteen whole days of our oh-so-precious summer break. But seriously– two weeks is a big difference! Summer is an important time for students to rest and recuperate from the otherwise never-ending demands and pressures of the modern high school experience. Taking away this time could hinder students’ ability to fully unwind over the break and lead to fatigue earlier in the school year. Not only does this change interfere with rest, but it may also clash with summer jobs and other obligations. While this problem only exists this summer, an earlier start date will have other more permanent implications.

This year, fall sports teams will have less than two weeks of practice before the first day of school on August 12th. Thus, teams will have fewer practices to prepare for their season without simultaneously balancing school. This may also increase some students’ stress at the start of the school year while they acclimate to their sport and school at nearly the same time.

Similarly, the earlier start will shorten the time that college-bound seniors will have to work on college applications–many of which are released on August 1st–before school begins. Even though most applications aren’t due for a while after this, it can be difficult to work on them alongside a heavy load of schoolwork, so this time is integral for many busy seniors. For this reason, the earlier start could increase stress for some seniors or cause them to neglect their classes at RJR in order to complete early applications.

In addition to its impacts in August, the earlier start shifts the calendar for the whole year. Second Quarter will end before winter break, the end of Third Quarter precedes spring break, and school will end on May 20th. These changes will each create unique challenges as the entire district adapts, many of which are hard to predict. Some effects, however, have already become points of contention on this calendar.

One clear difference immediately noticed by students was midterm testing moving from late January to mid-December. While having midterms before the break does more evenly split each semester, it also adds stressful testing during an already hectic time of year. Conversely, January is already stagnant, so testing does not interfere with other events. January testing also helps break up this stagnancy by giving students a week with a different schedule. This time of year has very few breaks from school, so midterms create a break while testing occurs, as many students have few exams. Even if a student has a full week of exams, it’s better to have that week in January when there is time to study than in December when everyone is preparing for the break and the holidays.

Additionally, the new calendar places spring break in mid-March. Unless you have the luxury of traveling out of state, this leaves some pretty bleak options. Mid-March usually consists of rainy weather and inconsistent temperatures here in Winston-Salem, and even North Carolina’s beaches won’t have warmed up quite yet. Most of us will probably end up at home, wishing we could take time off a few weeks later in the late spring warmth.

Overall, the new calendar definitely has its drawbacks. By starting two weeks earlier, the schedule we are all accustomed to will be thrown off, resulting in a rocky start to the school year. Different breaks, different testing, and different timing will all contribute to a confusing and difficult year. The effects outlined here are just the beginning, and more snags will become apparent throughout this coming school year.

Counterpoint: Long-overdue, new calender debut

Staff Writer

Inés Francom

Just a few months ago, the district announced the calendar for the 2024-2025 school year, one that was just a “little” different from previous years. With the new 2024-2025 calendar starting school about two weeks earlier than students are used to, it’s been quickly challenged with unwarranted criticism and negativity. The new schedule is a long overdue change, that’s, in the end, for the benefit of students. By losing two weeks of summer for one summer, this change allows students to receive better breaks throughout the school year without being detrimental to learning.

When the U.S. first started sending kids to school, we were still a very agrarian country. This means children usually helped on their family farms, providing cheap labor and helping provide their families only income. Losing the children’s help on the farms during summer was simply not an option for the majority of families in the U.S. at the time. Logically, school schedules were built specifically for kids to attend school during the off-season of farming and tend to their family farms during the summer. But in today’s society, very few families live off agriculture, making most school system’s start times arbitrary and outdated for the economic state of our nation today.

The new calendar also ends quarter two right before winter break, allowing for the stress of midterms to happen before break when students haven’t forgotten everything they’ve learned. Furthermore, this helps students get into the mindset of placing school and life boundaries in a world constantly demanding most of us in all aspects of life. By having midterms before Winter break, students can go through their studying and huge review packets while school is still in session, instead of mixing those school responsibilities with time that is supposed to be spent relaxing. Although we start Winter break later in December with this new calendar, we also end it later in January, which makes the return from break much easier because it gives students time to recover from any New Year’s Eve celebrations they might participate in.

The 2024-2025 calendar also gives students and teachers in Advanced Placement (AP) classes more time to review for the challenging end-of-year exams. Instead of the usual rush leading up to exams and then the month and a half-drag, most AP classes will experience post-exam. The new calendar also has school scheduled to end just two days after the last AP exam is held, once again utilizing the time students have in school and not wasting any time.

Of course, there’s still the big drawback most people will get hung up on: two weeks less of summer break this year. But it’s just one year; by the summer of 2025, students will return to having the typical summer break. Plus, how significant are two weeks in a summer break that is already about two and a half months long? There’s only so much break time you can take before it starts feeling monotonous and boring.

While the new calendar change is different from what students are used to, by making the two-week sacrifice this summer, we’re allowing the school district to use our time as students in a beneficial way and get better rest from our breaks throughout the school year.