With one semester behind us, the impact of changes from the 2022-2023 school year to the 2023-2024 school year have become more apparent. One of the most prevalent is the exclusion of the A/B combo day.

Last year, students started almost every week with a combo day, where they would go to all seven classes in one day. Combo days received predominantly negative feedback–from students especially–sparking frustration among the community.

Students were so angry over the combo days last year, current junior Lane Christopher started a petition on change.org. He made the petition in hopes to spark change and remove combo days from the schedule. His petition ended up getting a total of 187 signatures from the community.

“The fact that this petition has so many signatures shows that combined A/B days must go,” said junior Patrick Sanders, who was a supporter of the petition.

Christopher made his petition on Sept. 1, 2022, and while change did not come as early as he hoped, the change did come.

With this new year, combo days have been almost entirely removed from the schedule. There were multiple reasons for this new change, including more opportunities for activity periods, more late starts, and an overall increase in student health and wellness.

On the student side of the community, the exclusion of combo days has been met with almost entirely positive feedback. To students, the combo days seemed to make the days drag longer than a normal block day.

On top of that, students felt they were met with more homework over the weekend when they had a combo day on the coming Monday. Having to do homework for seven classes over the weekend, rather than having work for only half their classes due, caused students to feel overwhelmed with the workload.

“Last year it made my Sundays, just the entire day, homework. There was no time for anything else,” said junior Sam Reintjes.

Reintjes also felt the combo days affected him throughout the week as well.

“The Monday night after was also stressful because I only had one day to get [homework] turned around.”

This year’s new schedule has not only impacted students, however. Teachers and administration have also been affected equally. With this year’s block schedule, teachers often see their classes a different number of times each week. With the inclusion of combo days, teachers were generally ensured to see their classes the same amount of times each week.

Administration also benefited from the exclusion of the combo days, however. With the new block schedule, teachers have more opportunities to see their classes for longer periods, giving them longer and more complete lessons. While the 45 minute classes on combo days could be utilized for a shorter lesson plan, in general, many around Rockhurst feel a longer class period benefits both the teacher and the students more.

While the combo days are largely gone, they’re not completely eliminated. There is one scheduled for Feb. 12.