When the Las Virgenes Unified School District board created the new finals schedule, the intention was to make a schedule that was beneficial for students and teachers. Unfortunately, the outcome was not even remotely close to the one the board was expecting. Implementing this new finals schedule has caused students to receive lower grades on their finals, created unfair circumstances for teachers and generated an unnecessary amount of stress among students.
Putting finals in a normal block schedule creates a stressful atmosphere. In previous years, finals in all courses had been given after winter break on shortened days, creating a less stressful test-taking environment. When students study over winter break, they have more time to prepare for their tests. However, the new finals schedule produced the opposite effect. Teachers are given the opportunity to continue to give out course work and tests while the other teachers are distributing finals. Students have less time to take the finals and are forced to take them on regular school days; as a result, students may feel they did not do as well on their finals this year as they have in the past.
“Personally, this schedule has been extremely stressful. Not only did I have to study for weeks before break, but I had to study during and after the break for three finals that were all on one day,” said junior Lily Lester.
Similarly, the fact that finals this year are divided up before and after winter break is immensely unfair to teachers. The math, science and foreign language teachers who gave students their finals before winter break were forced to rush their lesson plans in an attempt to teach everything before the final. After their finals are over, they have nothing left to teach until the next semester. Many teachers openly admitted that they were not going to teach certain lessons so that they could fit other lessons in before the final. Teachers who gave their finals after winter break are given more time to teach their students.
The new finals schedule is also unjust to students. Students have to juggle their finals and their regular classes because the finals are being given during regular school days. Because students are worrying about other classes apart from their final, they are not as prepared as they should be. Many of the classes students take are hard enough without also having to worry about potentially taking three finals in one day.
“Weeks and weeks of studying for every final puts an unnecessarily enormous amount stress and difficulty on each student,” said junior Alexa Mulne.
Instead of dividing up the finals schedule, all finals should be taken before winter break to ensure a relaxing and stress-free winter break. All teachers would know in advance that they have to create their lesson plans in order to prepare students, and students would not have to study over winter break. Although this year’s finals schedule might have been nice in theory, the majority of the CHS community can agree that this schedule should never happen again.
