Most students share a disdain for Pride Time. It’s no secret that while it can be used productively, Pride Time comes with numerous downfalls and difficulties. From wandering students to another social hour, it leaves many wondering, how can we fix this? Can the system even be fixed?
As you may know, the Pride time policies have been changed into a new, hopefully improved way of auto-scheduling. As of now, for Monday-Friday if students are still unscheduled by 10 a.m., they will be scheduled into a random class from their schedule. Students cannot change this after this time and yellow passes are NOT allowed anymore.
The yellow pass problem has been growing, leaving many students wandering the halls with a “get out of jail free” card essentially. The hallways were filled with students who either had nowhere to go or who just wanted to skip.
Pride Time was originally introduced as an intervention period for students who were struggling academically. It’s another period to work on assignments and communicate with teachers. Unfortunately the system didn’t work out the way it was supposed to. Students weren’t being scheduled or failed to schedule themselves.
To originally fix the problem, auto-scheduling was introduced. If students weren’t scheduled to any classes by midnight they would automatically be scheduled to the MPB room for the period. This backfired because many students just waited to be scheduled to the MPB room, leaving many students sitting around all Pride Time in the MPB.
Towards the end of February, a meeting between the staff took place discussing Pride Time. It was decided that too many students were out and the system truly isn’t working as it should. When asked about the problems with Pride Time, a teacher said, “We either make it work or we get rid of it.”
My personal opinion on Pride Time is it brings more problems than good. Most students go and sit in Pride Time on their phones, working off task. I, myself am not excluded from this. I think if Pride Time is such a problem, like kids being everywhere they shouldn’t be or just plainly wasting time it should just be taken away. The negatives outweigh the positives.
