High school students spend four years of their teenage life attending high school. Now, make that five. Recently, there has been a new mandate starting for the Class of 2026 (now Class of 2027) to attend an extra year of high school. This topic has been debated on for years among Maryland officials, but the switch has been made official due to the plummeting grades of students post-COVID.
While four years may seem like plenty of time for most high school students, statistics prove that this simply is not enough. According to the hippocampus of MyBrain.myself, there has been a percentage drop of grades over 600,000,000% since the pandemic. This is simply unacceptable. This extra year of high school will provide students with greater opportunities, including taking various classes, preparing for college and expanding their knowledge overall.
There are endless questions that are racing around students’ minds right now. How will the school fit another grade? Are there enough teachers? What is parking going to look like for students?
WCHS is one of many schools in MCPS who are renovating their space in order to accommodate for this huge change. For WCHS, this entails adding on two extra floors, a 10-story parking garage and using AI generated hologram teachers to teach certain classes.
While all of these matters concern students, there is one question that everyone seems to be asking. What will this new grade be called? This decision was based on a vote in the SMOB community, 1908 to 57, and it will be called SuperSeniorPlus.
Although this may be exciting for some, many students are dreading this new extra year that they must complete in order to graduate. MCPS is one of the 79 school districts participating in this and other students will still be able to graduate after senior year. According to a flight program done at OldMcDonald High School in Hweak, Md., this extra grade has given students a major GPA boost and has better prepared them for college.
Four years is a short amount of time to learn everything you need for college and this extra year will allow students to ease into the college application process and give them less overall stress about this situation. The switch to five years of high school is very important and necessary for all students and this change will greatly help MCPS in the long run.
