Students at Antigo High School are pushing back against a revised class schedule for the 2022-2023 school year.
The Unified School District of Antigo's Board of Education had already determined school days would be 17 minutes longer four days per week, to allow for a one-hour early release on Wednesdays.
Julianna Bauknecht, a current junior at the high school, wrote a letter directed at members of the school board, saying most students are not in favor of the change.
She claims the move has few benefits, adding that the hassle of reworking transportation is ultimately not worth having an early release on Wednesdays.
"Rerouting all the buses here causes issues for parents, students; everybody involved in the school will be involved in some way, shape, or form, and everybody is going to be a junior or senior at some point when they are going to be employed and this is something that sticks around, it's going to cause issues for them in the future," Bauknecht said.
She met with administration Tuesday to ask why the changes were made.
"They designed that extra 17 minutes each day to make the classes not seem so rushed, but even that is simply only two minutes additionally for every class. It's not going to make a significant impact in my opinion and in the opinion of some of my peers," Bauknecht added.
She gave a speech expressing her concerns on behalf of the student body at Tuesday's school board meeting, giving the letter to each board member.
After Bauknecht concluded, Jill Mattek Nelson proposed that the board reconsider their decision and take away the one-hour early release on Wednesdays.
Trina Borneman, another board member, agreed, saying that a student doing their due diligence to see what can be done about an issue should be recognized.
"If we have a young person who put the legwork in, came in front of us, had that conversation, we need to reconsider it in my opinion, because that's what we tell them to do all the time. It's the process and they're putting that to work. That's the right thing to do, I guess," Borneman said.
Board members will officially reconsider the Wednesday early release at their Committee of the Whole meeting on June 14.
