School adds study hall

CLOVIS — Kids these days have busy schedules. Between sports, clubs, jobs and other extracurricular activities, there’s not much time left in the day for students to deal with their most important task — their schoolwork.

Because of this, Clovis High School officials have rearranged the daily schedule to include a 28-minute period of time called homeroom.

First implemented on Jan. 25, school officials view homeroom as a time for students to make up missed assignments, receive extra help from their teacher and peers or just get their homework done before going home.

“Everything that I’ve been trained on as a principal, everything that the research shows is if you want to have something shift, you need to do it during the school day,” CHS Principal Jay Brady said.

“Our kids are busy,” CHS Assistant Principal Alicia Spearman said. “Our kids are in extracurriculars, they work, tons of our kids have jobs, plus college classes. So we knew the only way to get kids help was to build it into the day.”

In order to account for the additional study time, CHS trimmed a minute off of passing times from five minutes to four and shortened all seven periods to 49 minutes. Previously the schedule had three 55-minute periods and four 50-minute periods.

Brady said administration did not have any concerns with the cuts to passing time or classes, and so far the students seem to agree that the changes have worked.

“It’s very beneficial for being able to do your work that you missed,” junior Marissa Cabrera said about homeroom. “I like how they provided us that time and we still have enough time to get to classes and stuff like that and do what we have to do.”

Brady said the feedback so far from students and their families, teachers and administration has been largely positive.

“We’ve had a good response from our parents and when I talk to kids, the kids are overwhelmingly positive. They say they’re thankful they don’t have to do this work at home,” Brady said.

With the program only three school days old, students interviewed on Tuesday said they were already reaping benefits from the extra study time, thanks to additional internet availability and access to their fellow students for peer tutoring.

“It’s nice because at the school you have all the resources like graphing calculators, computers, kids to help you, instead of at home just being on your own with a laptop,” junior Chandler Culberth said.

“I have a job, I’m in band and I have a college class so I really haven’t been having the time to get all of that stuff done but the 30 minutes really has helped me get that work done,” junior Angelisa Gomez said.

Spearman said so far teachers have been great about using the extra time to assist students and junior Cierra Gallegos said teachers still monitor students and keep them off their cell phones or other devices to ensure they maintain focus on schoolwork.