On Friday, November 13th, the HSE School Board made a decision to send all students in grades 7-12 back to Phase 1 of the Operations Plan. Phase 1 includes 100% virtual learning for all students with almost the same schedule as Phase 2 (50-50 learning) of the Operations Plan with some minor changes. The minor changes include a centralization for all lunch periods, an increase in the time allotted for passing periods in between classes, and a decrease in the time for classes themselves.

Starting with the changes for lunchtime, all of the high school students share the same forty minute period for lunch and the middle schoolers share a thirty minute lunch period. These lunch periods will occur approximately halfway through the day as usual. The time allotted for lunch has not been reduced or increased, just moved for all students. On the other hand, passing periods have been increased in their time allotted for students across the high schools and middle schools. High schoolers and middle schoolers will now enjoy a ten minute passing period in between classes. In order to account for the increased time, class time will be shortened for both school levels. Classes on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday are now eighty minutes long; Wednesday classes are only 42 minutes long. Tiered Interventions will still be available for high schoolers to access, but it is not usually required for students to attend.

More specific information on the new bell schedule is available on the HSE Schools website in the Operations Plan link. Downloading that will allow you to see everything that is happening in relevance to the coronavirus pandemic. On top of that, HSE High School offers a Bell Schedule App for its attendants, downloadable for free by going to its website and saving it to your phone’s home screen.