The school started a new bell schedule Aug. 28, going from five minute passing periods to six minutes. All class periods also changed to 46 minutes excluding fifth period which is still an hour for lunches. The Sting asked students and teachers what they think about the new bell schedule.

Junior Kendyl Bush said she likes the schedule not only because there is more time to get to class, but it also made it much harder for students to use the shorter passing periods as an excuse for being late.

“I think it kind of gave a way to see which students want to be in class and which don’t,” Kendyl said. “Because now, there’s no excuse for being late.”

With recent construction and add-ons to the school, teachers said it is only going to take longer to get to class which is one of the reasons for the schedule change.

“I think it’s good,” Chemistry teacher Jason McDonald said. “The building’s getting bigger and we only have more students pretty much every day, so, yeah, I think we need the extra time.”

Teachers had known that the bell schedule might change and had been suspecting it for a while because of past issues with a five minute passing period.

“Not ahead of time,” McDonald said, “but I think that there was a lot of teacher input that went into adding time to it because we could see that students were hustling but still getting to class kind of late at times.”

Students and teachers have said they are having trouble getting used to the new times the bell rings since they are more random now.

“Overall, I guess I like it,” AP U.S. history teacher Eddy Prather said. “I’ve got to get used to the new times because that’s what’s throwing me off a little bit.”

While the passing periods got longer, lunch time stayed the same, still just 25 minutes. Students expressed their frustration with the amount of time they have for lunch.

“The lunch line is so long, I have four minutes to eat every time I sit down,” freshmen RayLynn Samples said. “You get bombarded and people cut.”