We’ve all heard about it (albeit on very short notice), we’ve all dreaded it and now it’s in effect. Five whole minutes were taken from our lunch period and sloppily tacked onto third block.

Is this as bad as it seems? What purpose does it serve? Why was our lunch taken from us?

Students seem to have strong opinions on this matter.

“This seems like a dumb solution that negatively affects the free time of students,” said junior Jason Lee.

It’s easy to see why some students are upset. Lunch has been cut short, which largely impacts upperclassmen who go off campus for lunch. Five minutes less to get off base and back onto base is significant, as Kadets would routinely showing up late even before the scheduled change.

“Normally I would go home for lunch, but the extra five minutes has made that impossible for me to do. I would be late to class every time,” said junior Nate Wright.

Some kids aren’t as bothered.

Junior Aidan Cheesemore said, “Honestly the change doesn’t personally affect me, I still show up to class on time.”

Another student brings up an important point of discussion,

“It’s ridiculous, we haven’t even used up all of our snow days,” said Wade Poltenovage.

This year we have only used two snow days and two two hour delays, less than half of our allotted six snow days.

This brings up an important question: why is this happening, are snow days even the culprit?

While it is true that we have a certain amount of snow days “built in” to the schedule, schools are required by law to have a certain amount of “contact minutes” (in-class time) with all students. Due to snow days and some other scheduling issues the seniors would not have enough contact minutes to graduate without this extra five minutes each day.

In order to meet the contact time requirement, the five minutes were removed from lunch and added to third block. An additional way that students can earn contact minutes is the professional development day on Friday, Feb. 15, as a study period is being offered for seniors to attend school on this “day off.”

“By adding these five minutes and having these professional development days, we’re hoping we can honor that last (graduation) day for the seniors,” said principal Daniel Olson. “I met with the other [high school] principals to solve this problem.”

This sudden, unexpected schedule change doesn’t seem as bad when compared to the alternative: extend school into summer. So, overall, the five minutes makes a minimal impact, and most students are not affected by the change.

Since it is required by law that we take action to increase contact minutes, we really don’t have a choice. Even if we did, five minutes can really seem like a small price to pay since this year’s graduation date is at stake.