Mackenzie Thomas
Staff Writer
Last Tuesday, nearly 200 students at South High School in Cheyenne organized a protest over the loss of their daily study hall. South High Principal Phil Thompson made an executive and sudden decision to eliminate this study hall as a result of student behavior.
“As we move into each school year, we realize that a huge percentage of our students use this study hall, but a large amount also do not utilize this time. There were a number of students who were not taking instructions throughout the study hall block during the week. Some chose not to go, others chose not to do anything during this time set aside,” Thompson said.
Thompson said he stands by his decision to eliminate the study hall with the goal of bettering the students’ time in mind. Though a percentage of the students of South High actually utilize this time to get their assignments and studies done, a larger portion of students do not use this time in academically constructive ways.
“I looked at what was happening and thought ‘could we redistribute this time so that these kids can use it in other places?’” Thompson said.
The daily study hall, which has been in place at South High for years, was a 40 minute time block between the first and second class periods of the day. This time was allotted for students to catch up on homework, make up assignments they had missed and talk to teachers to get extra help.
For many students, this time was beneficial as they were able to get the additional help they needed. Thompson said students would still be able to get additional help from teachers, it would just be before and after school instead of during that 40 minute study hall.
“In that 40 minute time block, some staff could have multiple students in their classroom or students could be in multiple places. In some classes we didn’t have any students and in other classes we had tons of students. Basically, I made the decision to redistribute this time to see if we could do a more efficient job,” Thompson said.
The 40 minutes will now be split up amongst class blocks. Classes will have an additional nine minutes tacked onto the end of their class period. This will be in effect for six weeks, and at the end of that six week period, Thompson will evaluate the benefit of this change.
“They will still have the extended learning opportunity, but students will just do this within classes and we have one day a week for students to make up lost or missing assignments. We just want to see whether the redistribution of time helps students or not. We are going to look at attendance and grades throughout these six weeks to see what works and what isn’t working,” Thompson said.
This change will look similar to the structure of the school day at both East and Central high schools in Cheyenne.
“With every big change, it will take time. The students who really use the study hall are upset, however, it’s the students who were wasting this time prompted me to make this decision to redistribute the time into structured classes,” Thompson said.
This change prompted over 200 students to organize a protest last Tuesday. Though the matter of eliminating the study hall is temporarily being evaluated for six weeks, students’ reactions were seen throughout this protest.
“Change doesn’t have to be bad, it can be good depending on how we look at the situation.” Thompson said.
Thompson, who has been in the education industry for multiple years, said he had seen student organized protests in the past.
“We saw one like this a few years ago throughout all three high schools in Cheyenne and I’ve seen others like this because I’ve been in education a long time,” Thompson said.
However, even those who did not properly utilize the time for the study hall attempted to get in on the protest.
“I was very impressed by the organization during the first block, then, after the second block, we had kids protesting not for the same reason. Some kids really care, and when people really care it makes a statement, but when it isn’t for the right reasons the statement is lost,” said Thompson.
