The dawn of the 2017 school year has seen a number of large changes in nearly every facet of our school: stricter dress codes, a shortened lunch schedule, and increased parking prices have all caused quite a stir among the North Atlanta student body.

But one of the most controversial changes this year has to be a significant change in the advisement schedule. While students used to have advisement once a week for about an hour, the school has changed this to a twice a month, drastically reducing the number of advisement sessions students will have. Of course, this is not a new trend as with every passing year the administration has tightened the advisement schedule. But this is, by far, the most drastic change in years.

9th grade assistant principal Meredith Kaltman said that the official reason for the change was that it increases instruction time. “We also found that we could get all we needed done in the the new schedule,” she said. It would also appear that many of the teachers and staff were on board with the change and math teacher David Ehrman is among them. “I’m cool with it. I wasn’t ever a huge fan of the shorter classes,” he said.

But the real question of the popularity of this change is of course what the student body thinks?

And it seems surprisingly enough that the students have been generally against a reduction in advisement. “I really don’t like it. It was my own miniature study hall,” said junior Clarke Peoples.

A concern for many sophomores is that their upcoming MYP project could be compromised by the lack of time to work on it in class. “I would like to have the old schedule back because we need as much time as possible to get help on MYP,” said sophomore Edqurdis Fair.

The move toward a shorter advisement has not been universally panned, however. “I really don’t care about the change, we didn’t do anything in that class anyways,” said junior Ishaan Ghosh.

But despite what opinions the various personalities of the school hold, only time will tell if the changed advisement schedule will prove to be a time saving change or an ill-advised disaster.