By Jade Thompson, staff writer

More senior skip days will be secretly issued, many more absences burned, and more time away from the books. The new school policy is testing seniors patience because of the shortened break. Two days doesn’t seem like much. However, the extended break is something that all students look forward to.

“I would rather have a break within the school year rather than a longer one at the end to give myself a rest in between my several AP classes and tons of homework assignments,” Maxwell Fitzell ‘17 said.

This shows the stress school puts on students and the importance of a longer break because students need to relieve stress of AP classes, honors classes, and homework.

The shortened break is an outrage to high school life. High school students need a longer break before school starts again so they can relieve stress and unwind. The longer break also benefits teachers so the state is punishing teachers and students by shortening the winter break. When students are angered they take their anger out by retaliating in class. A shortened break for seniors means that they get less time off of school and most seniors don’t have the patience to be in school for longer than they need to. But the school’s new policy doesn’t allow it.

The shortened break had occurred this year because the state of Michigan had added an additional three days to the school year so they took those days from the high schoolers’ break. The days should’ve been added to the end as intended, not taken from the winter break.

“My senioritis went through the roof this year when we had to come to school for the extra three days before winter break started which hurt my grade because of the tests,” Gabe Austin ‘17 said.

A shortened break means that students will suffer and so will their grades because of teachers forcing last second tests on students so they need to know five classes worth of material.

“I wish instead of taking away from break by two entire days of school that the school board  would’ve just added 10 or 15 minutes onto each of the school days so we could keep the full two weeks,” said Kristina O’Connell ‘17.

This is an easy accomplishment. Adding onto each school day and would shorten the school year, would allow us to get our full two break back, and would maintain the proper amount of hours needed for a school to get proper funding.

The point of a break is to take a break but making us go three days before it actually starts feels less like a the winter break we are accustomed to and makes it feel like it’s hardly even a break. Students need to get time off of school so when they come back they feel more energized from waking up later in the morning and not stressing about big tests.

Students and teachers should petition to extend the break back to the two weeks it was in the 2015-2016 school year. Another plan of action is to call onto the school board to simply add 10-15 minutes onto each school day to get our breaks lengthened again.