There is a major change affecting students at City High this year: advisory is no more.

Now, however, there are five minutes added to the end of every class. This may not seem like a large change, but it has made some students feel the days are even longer. 

“With the old format, it was easier because you were able to move to any class you needed help with. Also, the five-minute longer classes feel way longer,” Osvaldo Lopez ‘26 said. 

The ability to move to any class you needed assistance with was much easier for students because you could choose what class you would go to every day there was advisory instead of having to do one certain class.                                       

However, every class now has a 20-minute advisory period once a week at teachers’ discretion. With many students now having to seek assistance before and after school, this new policy makes it harder for both students and teachers. Oftentimes students will have sports or other commitments before school and teachers will be busy grading or making plans for the day. Another factor is that students who take the bus to and from school thus have little access to clubs at all since most of them are during this time.

Many students in the past years have relied on advisory not just for retaking tests, but also for clubs and homework. With the new rule, students cannot leave the classroom for different classes or clubs, which forces them to hold meetings before and after school and makes it impossible to meet during school. This should have been taken into consideration before making such a major change. Many students also are unable to be at school before and after school, which has led to a decrease in some club’s attendance. Mr. Crawford, the sponsor of multiple clubs, stated that, “Both the Philosophy club and the Astronomy club chose not to continue this year due to the loss of advisory.”

The main point for getting rid of advisory was that many students didn’t use their time for work and wandered the hallways, which led to an increase in chronic absenteeism. Chronic absenteeism is when a student is absent for more than 10% of their school days, which is about six days per trimester. According to the National Center For Education Statistics, the national attendance rate was 90 percent in November 2023 meaning 1 in 10 students were still chronically absent. 

“After studying our data on advisory time, we just believed we needed to try something else to see if we could develop a system where more students would utilize the time productively,” Principal John Bacon said.

Although this change gets rid of one problem, it creates another one in return. There are still students who do need help from their teachers.

This also challenges teachers because they have to adjust their schedule to fit in the 20 minutes per week for the new advisory format, which can change their lesson plans and get in the way. This shows it can be problematic for lots of different people at City High, not just students. 

However, some teachers also like the new format.

“I like the flexibility of the new format, and I like that the students who want help are already in my room,” English teacher Ms. Brinkmeyer said. 

This change to advisory could be reversed though after the end of the first trimester if the new format does show to be worse than the old format.

The old advisory style gave us 80 minutes a week to move between classes to get work done. The new format promises 100 minutes a week, which is an increase in advisory time, but some classes like Marching Band and Journalism can’t have advisory due to the format in which they are run, which can decrease the promised time to even less than the old practice.

All in all, while the new advisory format has some upsides like more overall time and potential fix to chronic absenteeism, there are too many inconveniences for students and teachers because of many factors like clubs, bus schedules, and sports which all happen before and after school. Teachers have to fit in time for advisory every week also, and most of the challenge to students and teachers schedules by having to do most activities before and after school.