On the last day of fall semester last year, AGHS’s barren campus was made up of students forced to go to class by their parents and teachers finalizing their grades. This year, the campus will look different. It’ll be made up of students taking their final exams.
“Last year, the Friday before break, our attendance was 44%,” Principal Brad Grumbles said. “It cost [AGHS] $67,183.15 because [administration] made an early out on the Friday before winter break.”
The school is funded by the state and federal government based on attendance until March 31. The school must have 96% of students at school to receive their projected funding.
“Every day that [attendance] goes under 96%, [AGHS] starts to lose money, and we’ve already pre-spent that money,” Grumbles said.
The lack of attendance and subsequent loss of money influenced AGHS’s decision to make a change. But, the decision to change the winter finals schedule to be on the Thursday and Friday before break might be negatively affecting students.
“I think [the change for finals] was warranted because the school did lose a lot of money,” Emma Dodson (‘25) said. “But, [the change] does suck because [the school] changed it extremely late, and a lot of people had already made plans for leaving that Friday, like me.”
Dodson’s family planned their trip around finals, with the assumption that Friday would be a minimum day. With this assumption, they believed she wouldn’t be missing much. However, this wasn’t true, and now Dodson has to complete three finals before she leaves.
“I am taking AP Literature, AP Environmental Science, and AP Psychology early,” Dodson said. “I’ll probably be coming in after school every day [to complete my finals].”
While the new schedule affects students, it also affects teachers and their testing.
“The current finals schedule changes the type of final I’m going to give,” English teacher Christian Holst said. “While [finals] is longer than a traditional period, it’s not that much longer, so it limits the type of exam I can give.”
Time constraints limit the type of exams teachers can give, but so does the fact that grades are due that Friday.
“[Grades are] still due at 3:30 on that Friday,” Grumbles said. “We’ve got to get attendance up. We’ve got to provide rigorous opportunities for our students. But, then there’s also mechanical timelines because we have to get report cards to [students] in a timely manner. It’s a really tight balancing act.”
Figuring out the schedule for finals isn’t an easy task when having to consider students and staff, along with trying to align with Central Coast New Tech and Nipomo High School. However, many people have different opinions on the matter for finals schedule.
“[My ideal finals schedule is] probably the old schedule where [finals were] Wednesday/Thursday and then had a minimum day on Friday,” Dodson said.
While Dodson wants to revert back to last year’s schedule, Holst believes the best finals schedule is from two years ago.
“Ideally, I would like to do a Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday final schedule, and make Friday a teacher work day,” Holst said.
While finals will be Thursday (12/19) and Friday (12/20) this semester, Spring semester finals will stay the same with a minimum day on the last day of school.
