After seventy-six Wenatchee High School teachers voted to keep the current modified block daily schedule for the 2015-16 school year, many mixed opinions have surfaced from students and staff.

English teacher Mary Symonds shared that she’s not sure if this schedule is set in stone yet.

“I will believe the schedule on the first day of school. It has changed so much I don’t even know. If it’s the one we have this year, great. There are definitely advantages to having block schedule,” Symonds said.

Junior Christian Brandt-Sims said that he’s against keeping the same modified block schedule for next year, and doesn’t like that students did not get an input in the decision.

“I think that the teachers are very unprepared for handling block schedule and I don’t know if it’ll improve next year. [Students] not going to all of our classes every day of the week sets us up to fail and makes me feel unprepared for AP testing. It’s a drastic change from our normal schedule,” Brandt-Sims said.

Junior Ethan Toth shares a similar opinion towards retaining this year’s schedule.

“The block schedule has potential to be good if the teachers adapt to it, but I don’t think that’s going to happen,” Toth said, “I really think we should just go back to the original schedule because it worked before and with state requirements that’s not becoming an option, but changing the schedule so much is affecting the students and teachers. They need to find a way to have a schedule that the teachers like and the students will adapt to that. The teachers make the lesson plans so we should base the schedules around their curriculum.”

WHS Principal Bob Celebrezze feels that he has made his thoughts completely clear to all the teachers from the get-go.

“It makes complete sense to keep the schedule the same next year, because in the fall of next year we will have a panel of teachers putting together a new schedule. If we don’t keep it the same some students will have had three different schedules,” Celebrezze said.

According to Celebrezze, it’s still only year one so there’s going to be hiccups with the new schedule, but he believes this is the right way to go for next year, especially with upcoming CORE 24 requirements leading to another schedule change.

“I think there’s been a fair amount of misinformation passed along about where I stood with this topic. The only reason I was supportive of not doing this schedule again was if the teachers didn’t like it because of not having a prep period. No administrators voted for this block schedule; teachers voted for it,” Celebrezze said.