This year, Schreiber announced its new class cancellation policy, which states that any class that has a teacher absent must have a substitute.  Consequently, canceled classes are no longer an option, which causes a multitude of problems for students and teachers alike. 

Many students, especially upperclassmen, have packed schedules that sometimes leave a 30-minute lunch as their only break.  When a teacher is absent, many students look forward to having a welcome off period and decompressing after what most likely was a stressful day.  Students could visit the library and get some homework done to clear up their schedule after school or meet up with friends and destress.  Giving students more off periods allows for a better high school experience.

 “Having a substitute teacher isn’t really useful because they don’t really do anything other than take attendance.  Without having a substitute teacher, if the actual teacher assigns work to do, you could do whatever work they assign from the library, and once you are done you can do other work.  With the library, you also have all the textbooks you would need, but in a class with a substitute, you will just finish the work given from the class and then just be stuck doing nothing for half an hour as opposed to being able to do work for other classes,” said sophomore Harry Gindi. 

Another problem with having a substitute teacher for a class is that it is useless in the long run.  The whole period would be a waste of time and pointless because many teachers do not understand the subject they are filling in for.  For example, if your math teacher was absent, you may have a teacher from the language department as a substitute who would be unable to effectively teach that class.  As a result, that period would be wasted because the students would not learn much math and would instead be tied up with busywork.

“When a teacher is absent for a class, it gives students the opportunity to take responsibility to do their own work for the class, which can help them better prepare them for when they are in college where professors aren’t always there to make sure you are staying on top of your classwork and homework.  Having a substitute teacher who doesn’t have any knowledge about the class cover for an absent teacher is completely useless,” said junior Nicholas Bienenstein. 

Although this policy was made to keep students out of the hallways and teachers to get paid to sub in for a class, the cons outweigh the pros.

First, many students already prefer to go to the library or cafeteria and do not loiter in the hallways.  Second, teachers that sub for classes provide little to no use to students.  It ends up being a waste of time for both teachers and students and the time and budget money could be spent in so many better ways.  Schreiber’s class cancellation policy has virtually no beneficial effect on the school environment and should be removed.