President Obama believes American students need an extended school year to compete with other countries. The responsibility of setting school schedules, according to law, falls on the shoulders of local governments.

“I can’t imagine going to school longer,” AP Christine Englert said. “When we are here, in the eight hours that most of us work, we work very hard. If we were to extend that day—and when we do extend those days, in tutoring—it’s just exhausting.”

According to Mrs. Englert, more hours in school would put additional strain on already busy students and teachers, who participate in anything other than school.

“We’d be able to compete better worldwide with students who do stay in school all day,” she said. “It’s their whole lives, they don’t do anything else. That’s kind of scary, and I think a lot of our students are stressed out anyway.”

Obama and his cabinet want to “just level the playing field,” but countries such as Taiwan and Hong Kong, scoring higher than the US on math and science assessments, attend school around 100 hours less per year than Americans.

“I don’t think having more time means more learning necessarily. If you could force the students to actually do their work during school time, instead of at home, then it might be helpful to them,” math teacher Sara Kamphaus said. “It forces people to do something they should do on their own. It’s very regimented. It’s like, ‘you’re not going to do your homework, so we’re going to add this extra hour to force you.’”

Sophomore Morgan Straley believes adding to the schedule, and taking away from breaks, would cause problems with students who find the current hours already overwhelming.

“We would have less breaks, and more homework. We’d get sick of our peers; there would be chaos,” Straley said.

Students not looking toward a higher education or providing for themselves would have less time outside of school to work.

“I think that not every student is cut out to be a student. Of course, we all have to have our high school educations, but where do we go after high school. I think that the kids that are headed for college, that they will flourish,” Mrs. Englert said. “But the other kids that aren’t, and already have a hard time in a traditional high school, they would flounder even more. They can’t focus; it’s just too long of a day.”

Schools would have to increase teachers’ salaries to cover the added hours and/or days.

“We already have trouble finding teachers in certain subjects. So I think we’d have more trouble finding math and science teachers. I think that could scare some people off from teaching,” Englert said.