Before 2019, the class change time was always 5 minutes due to the lower population of Lafayette at the time. The population was 2188 for the student body. When the schools opened back up after the COVID-19 outbreak, the administration changed it to 7 minutes because of the one-way hallways enforced in hopes of social distancing the students and staff. For the 2023-24 school year, the administration changed the time to 5 minutes. A week after school began, on Monday, August 29th, 2023, they changed it to 6 minutes. Lafayette’s population has significantly grown since opening its doors back up. The current population of Lafayette is 2380-2385, according to Dr. Orr. Is 6, let alone 5 minutes, enough time to get to class?

We asked 100 Lafayette students, “Do you think 5 minutes was enough time to get to class?” Only two people said they thought it was enough time. We then asked one student from each grade and a teacher this question and got their opinions on the 5-minute class change. Everyone came to the same consensus that it wasn’t enough time. “No, because we have way too many students in Lafayette and very few hallways, and for everyone to fit through the hallways and get through, it is pretty much impossible in that amount of time,” Molly Anderson, a senior, said.

We asked Dr. Orr why the administration changed the class change time. “Throughout the school year last year, the last minute or two of the passing period, very few students were still in the hallways, and [those students] were very consistent. So it seemed pretty clear to us that there was enough time to get to class, but there was just a minute or two that [some] people were stretching and using all the time available,” he responded.

Because of the one-minute addition to the class change, we asked 100 people, “Do you think six minutes is enough time to get to class?” Nineteen people said it was, but a large majority, 81, still said we needed the seven minutes back. Some students in our interviews argued that the students at Lafayette required more than seven minutes. But overall, 81% of 100 students said that six minutes was not enough and that it should go back to seven or above.

We asked students from each grade level and a teacher about their thoughts on the 6-minute class change. The overall view of the 6-minute class change was that it should go back to 7 minutes. Dr. Meeks thought that the 6 minutes were going in the right direction and that we would have to see what would happen. “It still is not enough, but it’s better [if ]you can still get a little bit more time to get ready, get out of the classroom and into the hallway to get to your next class. But if one of your classes is on the first floor and the next one is on the third, you are rushing everywhere to get to your next class and are still tardy,” Mia Kai, a freshman, said.

We wanted to get the reasoning behind the additional minute to the five-minute class change, so we went to Dr. Orr. He said the administration felt they needed help with what to do with students’ extra time during the class change. They decided to change it to five to see what would happen.

We asked Dr. Orr, “Would a seven-minute class change ever be possible to happen again shortly at Lafayette High School?” He said that the six minutes seemed to be working, and it would take a significant population change for the class change time to become longer than the current six minutes

We will see what Lafayette’s future holds for students regarding the class change.