When students at McKinley High School came back to school after winter break for the third quarter, they were greeted by another new bell schedule.

The bell schedule, proposed and agreed upon by a reopening committee, reduced class time for every class except for 20/20 by 10 minutes. The classtime reduction allows for more time for office hours. These changes were motivated by the fact that students and teachers wanted time for students to ask questions. They felt that this time needed to be built into the schedule itself for convenience.

“In a normal school year students often come early, or stay after class, or stop by during lunch to ask questions and get help, but this doesn’t work well with distance learning, but we knew that there needed to be some way for these kinds of conversations to happen,” reopening committee member Jonathan Loomis said.

Many students are using the extended office hours to get help for their classes and have found it to be useful. Freshman Shane Kaneshiro said he appreciates how you no longer have to wait until Friday to get help. 

“If we didn’t have the office hours, some of us including me could have a lower grade because we didn’t get the additional support,” Kaneshiro said.

Another student found the 10-minute cut to be insignificant.

“In most of my classes, they end a couple of minutes early anyway, so I don’t mind classes being cut by 10 minutes,” freshman Minh Nguyen said.

Unlike students, this period of time is mandatory for teachers. It is part of their job to stay for office hours. Industrial and Engineering Technology teacher Kari Yoo said not a lot of her students take advantage of office hours.

U.S. History teacher Corey Nakashima said having office hours makes his job easier because he gets fewer emails.

English teacher Megan Serrao said she is glad these bell schedule changes took place. She noted the differences between an odd day and even day before these changes took place. 

“It makes it much easier to message them (students) during class to come to see me after school rather than trying to get them to remember to see me on an even day,” Serrao said.

Math teacher Jason Yadao said the benefits and consequences of the class time reductions may depend on what kind of class a teacher is teaching. He shared his experience about how one of his classes was affected negatively because of the bell schedule changes.

“That is a class that is meant to be largely hands-on and the loss of 10 minutes of class time is a detriment. Instead of learning the ins and outs of each tool, we have been focusing on overall dexterity as there is now even less time to practice,” Yadao said.

Yadao said the addition of office hours overall, though, is positive.

“We teachers have the potential to be much more than just educators. We can be mentors or even a parental figure to some. Office hours give us the time and space we need to take care of our students beyond the classroom,” he said.