As the fall semester approaches finals week, students will find themselves participating in finals during a three-day period instead of two.

Last May, when organizing the agenda for the 2017-18 school year, administration decided to allot time for three days of finals, but were cut short of time to decide details of the schedule. Now, faced with the timely challenge, academic departments discussed the details of how the schedule could work for every department.

“Department heads got an idea proposed. So finals are going to be three days, and kind of spread out a little bit. The big thing is to avoid having four finals in one day, which can be overwhelming,” math teacher Jennifer Horn said. “Just looking at that and times and spreading them out a little more and giving some designated review time for each of those classes also.”

The schedule of finals has been redesigned to accommodate students. This way students do not have to have up to four finals in one day.

“In the last couple of years we’ve added more AP or honors classes, so students have more difficult schedules. So I have been checking around if people had done three or four day finals. Actually Mrs. Bergen found that Andover schools do three-day finals and was able to get their schedule,” Moore said.

In addition to the restructure of the schedule, students will attend “Railer Time” to finish finals and assignments during the day instead of staying after school.

“Students will have twenty minutes at the end of the first day for Railer Time, and it will be over lunch. So you could go back and forth between teachers for help or turn in assignments, or go back and finish another final. Or, during Railer Time we could proctor those finals in the lecture hall, if that teacher does not have the same lunch,” principal Lisa Moore said.

Horn believes that this will impact teachers that only teach part-time, as well as students.

“Some teachers are part-time so, for example ,I only teach on gold days so if you have a mixed day where you’re having black and gold day classes if they can be split to morning and afternoon can be convenient,” Horn said. “That built-in make up time is time that a lot of times teachers would be giving students anyway. Staying late in the day or coming in on a work day. This way it can work with students regular scheduled class days. I think the stress for teachers is better.”

Math teacher Randy Tolle believes that while this will positively impact students, it will affect teachers depending on how they run their finals.

“It depends on what people normally do for a final. Like for me I usually do a two day final so it will make a little difference on that. It might affect teachers depending on their schedule, or what they normally do. For me it’s not that big of a difference,” Tolle said.