On May 14-17, and May 21-22, the school implemented a schedule to account for the Keystone testing occurring during the first two hours of the day.

The schedule started with homeroom, then students not taking the Keystones moved to a different class for an hour and then moved to a second morning class until Keystone testing finished.

For example, on May 14, the classes were periods one and two. Then, the classes in the morning would rotate so that, by the end of the week, all classes had had an extra period during Keystone testing.

After that, Keystone testing ended and the schedule returned to a two hour delay schedule.

For the entirety of the altered schedule for Keystones, senior students did not have to come in until 9:30 a.,., which was after the two hours for Keystone testing.

This altered schedule was a good decision on administrations’ part, because, overall, there are many benefits of it for students and teachers.

The schedule allowed students to attend other classes and participate in enrichment activities over just sitting in a single class for the entire two hours.

Many teachers came up with creative or beneficial ways for their students to work in the extra hour they had with them during the day.

Biology teacher Gino Salvitti used the extra hour he had with his students to continue studying and preparing for the biology Keystone test on May 21 and 22.

English teacher Jenna Ritter used the extra time with her students to complete the May Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) challenge.

Not only did the schedule allow students and teachers to have extra time to work and study, but the seniors not having to attend for the two hours of Keystone testing had its own benefits.

The Keystone testing requires staff members to proctor the exams, be hall monitors to ensure that no students enter the hall used for testing and to escort testing students to the restroom, and to be available to switch with teachers that need to use the restroom during testing.

The seniors not attending school for the Keystone testing period allows teachers that have all-senior classes to be available to fill these spots.

These teachers being available to proctor and be hall monitors keeps the school from having to pay for as many substitutes to cover the classes of teachers proctoring.

There were many benefits of the new schedule, but I have one criticism of the schedule itself.

On many of the test days, Keystone testing ran past 9:30 a.m. and as a result, administration had to cut period one short on many occasions.

This caused an issue because many students had projects or assignments to work on period one and were unable to because the period was so significantly shortened.

On May 17, to correct this problem, administration implemented a modified schedule when Keystones ran over their time for the fourth time, in which period one ran to 10:30 a.m.

I think this modified version of the Keystone schedule was a great way to solve the issue; however, I think that administration should be prepared to use this schedule more often.

Perhaps it should be used in the case of testing sessions taking too long two days in a row, the third day should feature this modified schedule to ensure that students and teachers do not have to sacrifice their period one.