On January 11, the Findlay City Schools school board will re-evaluate the remote learning schedule. With this, many students and staff alike are hoping for a change in the way things are being done.

Students find the current schedule stressful, having gone from three days at home and two in school on a regular schedule, to five days a week on the regular schedule and having nearly no time to adjust. Teachers find it difficult because it’s exhausting, to plan and grade, with no breaks during the week.

Almost everyone is rooting for a change on the eleventh, although they may not be going for the same change.

Some find that they’d like a schedule in which we are not running a 7:30-2:40 bell schedule and instead, we are running either a shorter day or teachers have office hours, rather than full periods.

“We need a much shorter work day, where students can have time to work on assignments, with teachers available during office hours,” says art and ceramics teacher Mr. Wagner.

While some want to jump right into going back to school five days a week,

“We should be at school 5 days a week because it’s not spreading at school,” says freshman Jeremiah Spiceland.

Others would love to move to a schedule similar to other districts’ remote schedule,“Washington Local School District (Toledo)* posted their remote learning plan and I would love to move to something like that,” says Spanish teacher Senora Kellermeyer.

“Washington Local School District has a 4 day remote schedule with Wednesdays off, much like we had during the modified hybrid schedule, the difference is they’re entirely online.

Students seem to have the same opinion on the schedule; anything except the remote learning model we are currently running on would be fine. They find our current schedule difficult to keep up with, the workload feeling like too much and too stressful.

“Schedules aren’t catered to how kids work best, they just want to keep things the same because they think it’ll be better for us to have a schedule,” says freshman Katy Rubiolo.

This is a frustration for many, with mental health and other home life things getting in the way of their daily learning.

“A lot of people have been struggling with mental health since we went completely remote which causes a lack of motivation,” says freshman Cora Sterling, “If you miss part of a zoom call because you have to watch a sibling or your wifi went out, then you miss part of that lesson and there’s not an easy and/or efficient way to learn that on your own.”

One of the schedules, it seems many are in favor of, is returning to the 2 day a week hybrid schedule. “I think the hybrid schedule did work better than remote,” says band director Mr. Wilson.

This schedule worked well for teachers, giving them Wednesdays to plan for future lessons, and the schedule worked well for students by giving them a little bit of freedom to complete assignments on their own schedule.

Many students agree with teachers in wanting to return to the hybrid model. “I think we should go hybrid because personally, online learning is not good for me and it’s really stressful, but at least with hybrid we can be in school some time,” says freshman Emmy Caton.

Worst case scenario, we stay on the remote schedule, but even at that, hope for adjustments to that schedule are present as well.

“I would start at 9am and end at 2pm. Even periods would attend remotely Monday and Wednesday for 45 minutes, if needed. There are no study halls. Odd periods would meet on Tuesday and Thursday. Fridays, teachers could prepare content for the following week,” says art and ceramics teacher Mr. Wagner.

No matter what happens, almost everybody is hoping for a change.

The time between Thanksgiving and Christmas break was difficult, students and teachers alike had a hard time with it. Hopefully, the re-evaluation of the remote learning schedule will result in a positive change.