By Catelyn DiLeva
Staff Writer
Next school year there will no longer be a Ski Week Break due to a calendar change in the Manhattan Beach Unified School District which is beneficial for students but not for teachers because of the large amounts of work they have to do.
Instead of having two separate winter breaks during the school year, Costa and the rest of the MBUSD will be getting rid of Ski Week, shortening Thanksgiving Break, and changing finals to be before the Winter Break which is not beneficial to students or teachers if they are doing the large amounts of work during the break. This change in schedule is causing people to question if the MBUSD will add a Semester break to the schedule or cut down on more breaks.
Many other schools in the Los Angeles area have semester breaks after finals which on average last for three weeks. Since Costa is getting rid of the extra February break and shortening Thanksgiving breaks, they should add another week onto Winter break to separate the two semesters more definitively.
According to Dale, the two week winter break is a scheduled time cut out of the school year to help seniors plan college tours instead of missing school and taking tours later in the school year and missing class. This helps seniors plan time, but is also unuseful because the winter break is mostly spent celebrating the holidays.
If there were to be a semester break or an extra week of winter break, students could have more time to spend on college tours or other activities that involve the school and also enjoy their break and get ready for the next semester.
According to Dale, as of now, the winter break acts as a semester break, except for the fact that Costa holds finals after the break. If there were to be a semester break after finals or an extra week of winter break that could act as a semester break that would be a more straightforward calendar plan and would ideally make more sense to teachers when planning for the year.
The drawbacks to having an extra week of break or a separate semester break is having to change the calendar again and possible problems with scheduling and other testing. According to Dale, there is a reason for all of the calendar changes and they all have to do with grades, college tours, testing or other academic events that are already planned.
The biggest benefit of having a semester break or adding a week to the winter break is having finals before break and then coming back to school with an entire new semester. As of now, over winter break, students are studying and waiting for finals to happen and working on assignments instead of taking the time to decompress and feel replenished for the new semester.
If finals were before the winter or semester break, it would give students and teachers a break from having to prepare for testing and finishing up and stressing out about grades during break. The extra week would give students and teachers extra time to get ready for the next semester and prepare for either the new classes or same classes students have.
If there were to be a semester break it should be added to the winter break because it would separate the two semesters exactly. If finals were to be held before break and grades had to close during breaks so teachers could finalize them, it would work out so everything in first semester is already done and then when Costa comes back from break it would be a clean slate for second semester.
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