Connor Kinser

Students wait for the bus on a hot day after school. Students wait for 30 minutes after early release on Mondays for the buses.

A new big change to Grand Junction High School this year is that now every student has an early release.  

Every Monday, all classes are only 40 minutes long instead of the regular 45 minutes. Lunch is 10 minutes longer than usual and at the end of the day every student is done with school 30 minutes earlier than the other four days of the week.

That’s right, at 2:45 p.m. students are done for the day.

I am very grateful that we have an early release, however I think some of this is underthought. One big complaint comes from a friend of mine who can’t drive, and has to wait for the bus. We get out at 2:45, but the buses still run on the regular 3:15 release schedule.

 One of my friends wondered why the bus wasn’t there right when we got out. The problem is that 30 minutes is a long time to wait for the bus, but it’s not enough time to actually do something. It takes too long to leave the school, go somewhere and come back. It’s just not worth risking the chance of missing the bus.

So what are you supposed to do this time? Well, the school says to wait on the lawn and to get ready for the bus. I feel like bus kids are kinda getting screwed over in this whole early release ordeal. Sure, you can hang out with people but what if your friends aren’t there; and even if they are, you still have to hang out in the hot sun.

It also messes with the learning aspect of school; five minutes might not seem like a big deal, but when it comes to our education it can add up. Since we have 37 weeks of school and we multiply that by 5 minutes, we miss exactly 135 minutes of each class for a school year.

I feel a bit more rushed in my math class to get all of the problems done. In 3rd hour with announcements factored in you lose another 5-10 minutes. I feel like the teachers are rushing to get all of the information for the class period.

Students have also been informed that they can’t wait inside the school during the time from 2:45 to 3:15. Students have to be outside during this early release. Me and my friend were hanging out in the commons; I was on my Chromebook doing work, he was just hanging out on his phone, but then a teacher came over and told us to go outside and that we couldn’t wait inside.

We obviously just went over to the Gym commons and waited there instead, but if we were following the rules, we’re supposed to go outside on the West Lawn where the weather sometimes pushes over 100 degrees in the afternoon and hang out there for a bit. What are the students supposed to do during this time?

Another big question that I have wondered, from not only myself, but from other students: Why do we even have an early release on a Monday?

We just got off of a two-day weekend break so why do we need an easy day to follow that? I personally believe that an early release would have been much better to have Friday. This way we could have an early release into the weekend. It also would be weird to have it on a Wednesday or a Thursday, because it would affect one of the block days weirdly unless you wanted to switch off which day has the shorter day each week.

“We wanted to align with the rest of the district since we do shared transportation. So we didn’t actually get to choose that. It was chosen for us,” said GJHS Principal   Jory Sorensen. 

The district chose for Grand Junction High School to have this early release on a Monday.

I also learned that the early release is not only for the students to get out early but for the teachers to have some training as a team.

 “When we have a staff of 120 people, we need time together so we can talk about what it is we are about. Plan around that and work as a team,” Sorensen said. 

I would fix all of these problems by just simply getting buses here early or giving the students something to do. This way the students who are waiting don’t just look at their phone for the next 30 minutes.