Staff Editorial: The school board should vote to postpone finals
Photo illustration by Sarosh Ismail
Midterms were originally scheduled to be held March 4-5; however, due to inclement weather and a state-wide power crisis, LISD schools were canceled for one week. The school board will meet Monday to discuss the possibility of postponing midterms until March 11-12. If the school board wants to keep students’ best interests in mind, voting for the postponement of midterms is the obvious choice.
To get an overview of student and staff’s opinion, “The Hawk Eye” sent out a survey to students and faculty. Out of 1,457 responses, 68.6% agreed midterms should be postponed.
Due to school cancelation, it is only natural to push finals back a week and accommodate for missed school time. Many students did not have power last week and were unable to study and review course material. Students were preoccupied with more pressing issues like trying to stay warm — not schoolwork. Because of this, students could have forgotten recently-learned material. Some teachers even spent Monday reviewing material from the week before. An extra week would give teachers the time to finish any lesson material and also spend extra time reviewing for midterms with students.
Furthermore, some students’ houses suffered damage due to the inclement weather. We have all seen the videos circulating online of water pipes that froze and busted, flooding entire rooms. These students’ lives have been disrupted by these issues, and they are preoccupied with housing damages. With flooded rooms and a chaotic scene, it would be difficult for these students to properly study for midterms.
If midterms are held next week, there will still be a week of school left before spring break. If anything, it would make more sense to take midterms and then have a week of vacation afterwards. All new course material taught for the new nine weeks would likely be forgotten by students over spring break and teachers would have to spend time reviewing when everyone comes back. It makes more sense to just come back and begin a new unit.
Although the district adjusting the schedule could be somewhat inconvenient and parents and teachers would have to alter their schedule, it’s the best option for the students themselves. The job of the school board is to keep students’ best interests in mind.
Texas was struck with a once-in-a-life-time event and the school board should accommodate for these unusual circumstances. With the next ‘nine weeks’ actually being 11 weeks, the district has plenty of room to adjust the schedule and push back midterms.
Jacob Jones • Feb 26, 2021 at 11:43 PM
I feel like it is misleading to say that the majority of students and faculty support this action. After all, it is really difficult to know about your survey to begin with. One would have to be actively engaged in Hebron to even know about it. I personally never knew about this survey and neither have my friends. It’s not on any Hebron social media page. So clearly it’s an issue when we don’t even know what kind of students had access to this survey. Additionally, this poll only surveyed Hebron high school students. We have no idea what the situation is like for other districts. Also, Middle school students may be more affected than high school students. They could have it so much worse than us. LISD needs to accommodate for all students, not just Hebron. Also, if people are dealing with flooded homes, freezing temperatures, and no power, it is obvious that they wouldn’t even know about this survey or even have access to any internet. This result really forgets to include those from lower income neighborhood and backgrounds, making the results extremely biased. The majority of students do not support this action, just the majority that were surveyed. And it is clear that those without power, heat, or technology access are not represented, and those are the people who need their voices heard the most. It is obvious that with those people included, more would not want an extended midterm. I get that this is an opinion piece, but I’m upset by the lack of a viewpoint or counter argument from these that need midterms earlier. It also feels very biased to read, it is obvious the author is supportive of extending midterms and is claiming that it is an obvious choice. When it clearly isn’t. It’s a unfortunate circumstance really. I feel like Hebron Hawk Eye is relying too much on its google form polls and forget to consider any sampling bias.
Derik • Feb 26, 2021 at 11:19 PM
Interesting article. However, this may seem like a good idea, but most teachers are just assigning an EXTRA weeks worth of content to pack in before midterms. I feel like you are underestimating how understanding teachers are during these times. All my friends say their teachers are planning on taking ANOTHER unit’s test next week rather than the midterms. This is clearly not good since that’s one week less for students to prepare for that unit. This also results in poor midterm grades as well. I’m really disappointed that my teachers said that their classes will either take the next unit’s test next thursday/friday or take the midterm, depending on the result. Nobody is even prepared to learn an additional unit on top of learning past units to prepare for the midterm. Many students are steal coping from last week. My friend’s family is currently dealing with insurance because their home got flooded. God help them learn their next AP calculus unit. They said they would feel a lot better if they could just take the midterm because they already learned that material. Clearly, it is better to just prepare for the midterm on previous units. I feel like this article neglects to mention why taking midterms EARLIER can actually be the better idea.