Changing Costa’s master schedule would create unneeded problems.

This article is part of a PRO/CON opinion piece on potential changes to Mira Costa’s master schedule. To view the opposing side, see here.

Friday, February 26, 2010

Jason Boxer
Opinion Editor

Mira Costa High School’s current schedule works well and should be retained in future years. It currently prevents the disruption of its first semester finals, semester-long classes and sports seasons.

Although some call for first semester finals to be moved to after winter break, changing Costa’s schedule would cause students to miss out on the invaluable two free weeks that winter break provides to study for upcoming finals.

After around four months of instruction (from September to January), it is vital for Mira Costa students to review the material learned in all of their classes so they can retain the information. However, during normal school weeks, many students lack the spare time to significantly prepare for their finals.

The placement of finals after winter break under the current school schedule helps to limit this problem of students lacking study time. By holding finals after winter break, students are given two extra weeks of study time. They are free of all day-to-day schoolwork and they have ample time for studying.

By changing from a semester system to a trimester system, instruction in Mira Costa’s semester-long classes would be severely disrupted. Classes like government, economics, health and senior seminar English courses would have to be extensively altered.

Additionally, Mira Costa’s current sports schedule would undergo significant changes. Costa shares its September to June schedule with Palos Verdes, Redondo Union, Leuzinger and West Torrance high schools, and because of these similar calendars, the sports seasons of Costa coincide with its neighboring schools.

Additionally, the more than 50 high schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District also adhere to this schedule and provide sports opponents. If Costa altered its schedule, it would disrupt this and make scheduling sports games much more difficult.

Mira Costa needs to retain its current September-to-June schedule so it can prevent any scheduling problems in regard to finals preparation, semester-long classes or sports seasons.