The Oxnard Union High School District has been using the same calendar for quite some time, but this year the school board voted on whether or not to change it to a collegiate calendar. This would affect many people who plan their year around the traditional calendar. A collegiate calendar means that school would start in early September and end in mid-June. We would still have the same amount of weeks off for thanksgiving, winter break, and spring break. One of the biggest changes would be the ending of semester one. With a collegiate calendar semester one ends before winter break, making second semester about two weeks longer than first semester. If the board decided to take the collegiate schedule it would have taken place as of next year. This would be a big change for teachers and students to get used to.

The school board asked teachers what they would prefer and many schools including CI preferred the traditional calendar over the colligate schedule. It reasonable to want both semesters evenly balanced, the colligate schedule takes away about 12 days from first semester; therefore teachers would have to cram some lessons in before the semester. The flow of their teachings would definitely be changed and lesson plans would have to be shortened in order to accommodate to the collegiate calendar. Having the first semester end after winter break gives teachers and students two weeks to get everything in order. Teachers have a chance to get grades in and students get time to study for finals.

Having students study for finals during break is the ideal concept of winter break, but in reality not many high school students take advantage of the two weeks. When asked which calendar she preferred, CIHS Junior, Delia Thai said “definitely collegiate, it just makes more sense, longer summers and a stress free winter break”. Delia Thai explained how she goes out of town for winter break and doesn’t really get a chance to study for finals or get any work done, “it ends up being two weeks of stress rather than two weeks of fun” she said. It’s reasonable to assume that students are busy during the break and don’t get a chance to sit at a table and truly study for finals. And it does feel like finals hit us in the face right after the two weeks we had off. “It’d be nice to have a stress free winter break for once” said CIHS student, Ernesto Alcantar. Ernesto explained how he would we able to enjoy his winter break if he knew semester one was over. Ernesto also said he’d actually like having a longer second semester because AP testing is in May and he’d like to have more time during second semester to learn and study for the tests. Miles Minier, a junior at CI, said he’s not too sure he likes the fact that we’d get out mid-June, but he likes the idea of coming back in September, because it means having a longer summer. For students, the collegiate calendar seems to be preferred, simply because we get to finish first semester and take nice little break before kicking it into gear for second semester, and of course longer summers.

Miles, Delia and Ernesto all said they would have liked to have a say in the decision, and I’m sure many more students feel the same way, since it really does affect our learning. Unfortunately students didn’t get a vote in whether we kept the traditional calendar or adopted the collegiate calendar. One could say that the teachers didn’t really get a vote either since they just made a recommendation to the school board to consider. But their recommendation definitely pulled some weight in the decision, because the OUHSD school board voted to stay with the traditional calendar, which means some people are mad and some are glad.