With the change to no backpacks and laptops, many thought this would be the biggest year of change that they would ever see at BSM, but the biggest change is still to come with the change to an eight period day.

For the first time since the 1980s, high school students at BSM won’t have a seven period day. Instead, an eight period day starts in the 2011-2012 school year. Although the change from seven to eight classes is already finalized, all the details still need to be figured out.

The schedule keeps the current format for the most part, but builds in an additional period for physical education and wellness classes. “Everything stays pretty much the same in the sense that there still is a homeroom, there still is [an ABC] lunch period, but there would be an additional hour of the day.,” said Dr. Sue Skinner, principal.

Wellness, however, will only take up a few days a week. During wellness, there will be a teacher from every subject on hand to help students, students will be able to work on projects together, do regular homework, or just relax. “Those things that kids need to do to maintain that balance of mind, body and spirit,” said Dr. Skinner.

Another major reason for the change is that, due to new curriculum, most religion classes are set to meet five days a week next year. “It makes sense to me that a Catholic school would have religion meeting five days a week. It also makes sense to me that because of scheduling and space that wasn’t feasible at BSM, but I think now, with space, time, and creativity in our bell schedule, we can make meeting five days a week in religion a reality,” said Mrs. Becca Meagher, theology department chair.

Due to the additional period in the new schedule, classes are shorter than the current ones, but the overall school day lasts a little longer than it does this year. “The classes will be 40 minutes instead of 45, and right now we have the day being ten minutes longer, and that will probably stay,” said Dr. Skinner.

Although not called a semi-block schedule, some days look to contain extended class periods, but fewer of them. “Every so often we’ll do chunks, or blocks of classes, so on a Wednesday you might go classes one, three, five, seven, and on the next day you would go two, four, six, eight,” said Dr. Skinner.