The separate freshman campus has presented new challenges this year for teachers and students.

The first version of the freshman schedule included two lunches and a 10 minute travel time between 115 Greenough and the Old Lincoln School (OLS). The second version of the schedule was split by cohorts. Instead of two lunches, there were now three; blue lunch, red lunch and split lunch. While the 10 minute travel time remained the same, starting and ending class times did not align between the Red Cohort and Blue Cohort.

Interim Associate Dean Jenny Longmire said that one of the initial scheduling problems was fitting everyone into the school during lunch.

“We obviously need three lunches because as you know the cafeteria is [very small] and if it’s rainy at all, then we don’t have the outdoor space,” Longmire said.

The third and current version of the schedule changed the starting and ending times for many of the classes, and lengthened the travel time from 10 to 12 minutes.

When surveyed about their opinions on the most recent schedule, many freshmen said that the added travel time was the least convenient part. Freshman Sophia Egozy said that the 12 minute travel time was still not enough to make it to classes on time.

“I actually think the worst part is where they changed the times from 10 minutes to 12 minutes. That made a lot of the starting and ending times of the classes really weird,” Egozy said.

According to Interim Dean of OLS Brendan Kobus, many of the erratic start times are caused by an attempt to align class times between cohorts while both cohorts are at OLS.

“In an effort to simplify things, there was an effort made to align some of the times so that it was less of two distinct schedules and more of one 9th grade schedule with two cohorts; which then leads us to three lunches and some of the unique times,” Kobus said.

Both Kobus and Longmire, along with most of the polled freshmen, hope that the schedule next year will be simpler and more concise.

“I think, in my ideal world, I would say that we’re back to one schedule for the whole campus. It’s still complicated with the 10 days, but it would be a lot better,” Longmire said.

Although the current schedule is not ideal for students, a separate campus and a large grade are just some of the problems the schedule-makers have faced, and they have worked hard to ensure a schedule structure that functions and allows students to be in classes they have requested.

“I think the schedule tries to balance an incredible amount of needs while also displaying our priorities as a school, and our priorities have been to have 9th graders feel connected to the campus at 115 Greenough and to feel like they have all of the options for classes that students before them have had,” Kobus said.

Longmire said that although the schedule is confusing for students, the current version is functioning as best as possible.

“Every rendition of the schedule has improved. I want to be very clear about that,” Longmire said. “At this point I think this is as good as it gets.”