In the six years Lightridge has been open, the bell schedule has been changed four times, and since the student population has more than doubled, and the staff size has nearly tripled, what best fits the needs of the school has drastically changed since the school opened. Lightridge’s Bell Scheduling Sub Committee has created two new sample schedules for the 2026-27 school year.
The first schedule would have advisory/club time right after first or fifth block, instead of in the middle of the day like the current schedule. Lunch would not be happening simultaneously. Tuesdays would be club days. On Wednesdays, students would go to advisory for a typical advisory lesson. On Mondays and Fridays, students would go to their advisory classroom but have study hall instead of advisory. The committee is debating whether Thursdays should be an additional club or study hall day. The second schedule is similar, but on Mondays, Thursdays, and Fridays, instead of going to advisory for study hall, students would have an additional eight minutes of instructional time during each class block.
One of the biggest changes in both these schedules is when lunch would occur. Instead of being in the middle of the day, lunch would be during second or sixth block for everyone. However, while second lunch would be at the end of class at 12:45-1:15, first lunch would be very early in the day at 11:15-11:45. Students with first lunch would have to go to lunch before going to their second block, while students with second lunch would go to their second block first and then have lunch. The rest of the day would then continue as normal with third or seventh block and fourth or eighth block.
But how did they make these schedules? The aforementioned Bell Scheduling Sub Committee, led by Lightridge principal Ryan Hitchman and any interested staff members, creates these drafts. The Committee meets three or four times over the course of the year to discuss the bell schedule. The sub committee focuses on three main things when picking a schedule.
“How do we keep clubs during the day, how do we offer advisory lessons, and then how do we also maximize instructional time,” said Hitchman, when asked about the focus of the committee.
In addition to these three core goals of the sub committee, they also try to increase student safety and accountability. Although having advisory and club at the same time as lunch is convenient, it isn’t always the safest.
“While we do have a lot of students that do belong to certain clubs, as the year goes on, we notice that those numbers tend to dwindle a bit more. Instead of students going back to flex block, which changes every single day, they may be in the hallways, they may be taking a double lunch, they may be going to the library. No one is doing anything that they shouldn’t be doing, they’re just not using their time as what it was intended for,” Hitchman explained. Additionally, keeping track of where in the building students are becomes more difficult in these scenarios, which is a safety concern to the Bell Scheduling Sub Committee.
Despite these concerns, the committee is dedicated to keeping clubs running during the school day.
“We’re trying to balance running clubs and advisory. We looked at 4 other high schools of comparable size and none of those schools offer club time during the course of the day,” Hitchman noted. “We are going to have clubs during the course of the school day. That is something we have done here at Lightridge since we’ve opened, I think it is one of those things that makes us unique.”
Both students and staff members have advocated for keeping clubs running during the school day.
Hitchman also emphasized the importance of advisory lessons, revealing that the school may be purchasing new advisory programs which are more hands-on and targeted to each grade level. The current advisory programs have become a point of discontent within the student body as many students say that they are useless and should be removed.
Another topic discussed in the Bell Scheduling Sub Committee that often may be overlooked by others is the importance of aligning Lightridge’s school schedule with neighboring high schools.
“We have students at John Champe who come over here and have class, we send students over to John Champe, and sometimes our bell schedules are not aligning together,” said Hitchman. The sub committee is working on aligning the bell schedules so that students aren’t missing opportunities to take different classes at different schools.
Throughout the planning process, staff members have met with students to hear their opinions.
Freshman Madison Dew, having recently graduated from Willard, compared the middle school’s bell schedule to Lightridge’s.
“I liked having advisory in the morning because it felt more organized, but I didn’t like having clubs after school because it made it more limited,” Dew said. “I think having clubs during the school day is a good time to unwind and hang out with friends and do stuff you like to do.”
“I like that there’s six minutes of passing period, because I like to take my time leaving classes,” said sophomore Sofia Gelston. “I like that there’s opportunities for a lot of different clubs, but that also has downsides… when you have so many opportunities for clubs, you also don’t meet with those clubs as frequently, and that’s really hard for club leaders to keep their club members engaged when you’re not meeting at all, and it’s hard for club members to be interested or to actually participate in the club.”
However, many believe that the benefits of having clubs during the school day outweighed the disadvantages.
“I really like the opportunity to do clubs during school because sometimes, especially as a junior, I was worried that I would have other activities outside of school… but I was able to do clubs in school and didn’t have to put time out of school to do that,” said junior Sanvi Nanduri. Nanduri also echoed the opinion of many other students on the topic of Strike Time, which was a ten minute period in previous bell schedules where students were allowed to walk around as a break from classes.
“I would just prefer to have a small break; I really did like Strike Time, so maybe bring back Strike Time,” Nanduri said.
Although Lightridge has changed their bell schedule almost every year since they’ve opened, it’s been in the best interest of the students and the constantly expanding population size. And, in the words of senior Aiden Hudson, “It’s not too bad once you get used to it.”
