Expanding the school day!

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As times change, we experience incremental changes in education. One of these changes can be the duration of the school day. Our students are involved in classes and other activities throughout the year, with the majority of their academic classes occurring between 7:30 and 2:50. However, a large number of our students do not leave the building at our dismissal time of 2:50 because they participate in a variety of athletics, clubs, and activities after school.

As we look to grow more academic opportunities for our students, we have decided to offer an inaugural ninth hour class from 2:55 to 3:45. Our Fine Arts department was happy to take on this challenge by running a pilot class based in our Eagle Theater. The class they chose to run was Stagecraft as this group of students already works after school on a daily basis designing, building, and preparing our theater productions. We currently have 15 students taking this class and earning high school credit for their efforts. 

Our district mission is to ignite passion and discovery in every student and we do that by providing a variety of opportunities during and after the school day. Our students all have different passions and with our focus on the core academics of English, Math, Social Studies, and Science, little room is afforded in their schedules. Although we offer a plethora of electives during the school day that allow students to explore their passions, we have found that some students want to focus on more than one passion. Expanding our schedule by having a ninth hour class allows our students to take advantage of these courses and helps us ignite passion and discovery in every student.

David B. Newberry
Proud Principal
Lakes Community High School