By AJ Cassapo ’19

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This year, Strake Jesuit College Preparatory created a new schedule to maximize the efficiency of our school day. While the schedule is a blessing to most students, giving them longer free periods, Community Time, and more time to complete homework, there is an issue with one aspect: Green/White order. It cuts the day from five to four classes, adds 15 minutes to them, and creates one long lunch, rather than two short ones.

Let’s first dig into the lengthened class time. While longer classes seem to give teachers additional time to teach, the extra 15 minutes simply isn’t enough to allow teachers to adequately address a new topic or dive deeper into a longer activity. That’s one downside of the Green/White classes.

“I think they need to be longer in order to either start a new lesson or finish a longer activity,” said a teacher who asked to stay anonymous.

While it is a great idea, the execution is not as smooth as it is on paper due to how insignificant the 15 minutes truly is.

Another problem arises when lunch comes. The school is consistently growing and that can be seen on many aspects of campus. The Parsley Center auditorium cannot even hold all of the students during mass or assemblies, nor can the cafeteria during Green/White lunch. Everyone fights for seats and the lunch line becomes so long that the extra time added to lunch is relatively nullified.

“The lunch is just terrible. Seniors can’t even cut the line, and we spend half of lunch getting food, finding chairs and a table,” stated senior Lucas Leon. Compared to his last three years, Leon commented that the Green/White order has “made eating more difficult than it needs to be.”

I agree, Lucas. There should be no trouble in getting food, nor finding a place to eat it.

While the Green/White order may seem like a smart, effective way to help out teachers, it fails to use the time effectively enough to make a difference. I’m not saying that Strake needs to vault the idea and never use it. I just think that it can be either fixed or changed.

Could community time be removed and split into classes and lunch? Could we shorten time between classes and use those minutes?

Whatever it is, if the school wants to continue to have longer periods, something must be done.