Imagine hearing the shrill, sharp noises of high-pitched alerts repeating simultaneously, over and over again: an alarm clock. Outside, the weather is bleak and the sun is not yet shining. However, being up this early is necessary in order to get to school on time. This is just one of the reasons why an extra thirty minutes should not be added to the school day.

East has already managed to impose a lot of stress on the students in order to assure that they will be successful. Cherry Hill East puts a lot of emphasis on joining clubs and sports, on top of the continual academic pressure. With the thirty minutes added next year, there is an extremely high chance that these high standards will not be met.

Adding 30 minutes to the beginning of the day has no true value in the student’s daily academic grind. Six and a half hours may be the minimum a school day could entail but Cherry Hill high schools have been utilizing the six and a half hour school days for years without difficulty. Why does it make sense to change the starting time for school after so many years of consistency? Other schools in South Jersey may already start at 7:30 a.m., but East also surpasses them on academic terms. By making the school day longer, it will break the delicate balance that students have between school, home life, extracurricular activities, and outside activities.

Although the extra half hour adds about fourteen extra school days over the course of an entire year, on a daily basis, it adds only five extra minutes per class per day. Is this really necessary? A mere addition of  five minutes per class period is not substantial enough to warrant such a drastic change in the mornings of students and teachers, alike. Why does the administration feel that it is the right time to change the whole dynamic of Cherry Hill high schools? These whole effort seems to be fruitless to the Cherry Hill school district. Unless studies can prove that this change will ultimately benefit the students with improved AP examination scores, then, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”