During first period on Wednesday morning, students, refreshed from a relaxing snow day and two-hour delay were jarred awake by a shocking announcement. Principal Joan Benz promised that the disruption would bring “good news;” however, the decision to push back the entire exam schedule one day was anything but.

Granted, Benz was merely trying to do what she believed would be the best course of action for the CHS staff and students, but this decision reflects a lack of communication between the various groups in the school.

The frustrated students and staff should have had the opportunity to voice their opinions before the decision became an ultimatum. As the principal of a large school, Benz could not have foreseen every consequence of her actions, but this is where input from staff and students could have been beneficial.

According to administrator John Taylor, CHS was not the only school whose principal decided to act on MCPS’s option of moving the exams.

However, of the 25 MCPS high schools the Observer contacted, not one changed its exam schedule.

MCPS sent a message to every high school principal and yet, CHS was the only one to follow through with the decision. Perhaps the administration of other high schools had a better method of receiving guidance from others within the school before acting on the proposed change.

Instead, CHS students are left to deal with the aftermath, distributing petitions that will likely amount to nothing and muttering under their breaths. The fact of the matter is, that no one raised their voices loud enough in opposition, so Benz may not even realize the extent of the frustration.

Rather than individually dealing with the complications caused by the change, students should have created a more united front, for they had plenty of reasons to be upset.

Pushing back the exams essentially adds a day of school and takes away a day from the long weekend that students were planning to use for making up exams due to illness, travel or relaxation. If students are required to go to school on a day they were supposed to have off, the school missed during the snow day is basically being made up at the end of the week.

Not to mention the weekend before the exams. The pre-exam weekend is notoriously known as a “cram” weekend in which students attempt to absorb a semester’s worth of review material for seven classes in the span of 48 hours. However, according to the new schedule, Exam Review Day was the Monday of exam week, meaning that students did not have all of the materials needed to study during the weekend before exams.

Some teachers treated Friday as the Exam Review Day and were able to make the review lessons more comprehensive, but other teachers extended the final assignments for the second quarter and used Friday, the previous Exam Review Day, to give tests or receive projects. Therefore, students had a weekend worth of time, but not a weekend worth of review materials, which may very well have an impact on exam grades.

Following the Exam Review Day Monday, students will have one night to do some last-minute studying before the exams start Tuesday, which is hardly enough time.

The staff are not emerging from this debacle unscathed either. The sudden change in plans left them scrambling to push back tests, change lesson plans and extend reviews. With the full day intended for make-up exams removed, teachers will have to dedicate additional time to administer make-ups. Since there really is no other time dedicated to make-ups, and teachers are guaranteed a professional day for grading, make-ups will have to be pushed into the next semester.

Despite, the obvious flaws of the decision, it was the result of a lack of communication. The fact that few students and staff had the confidence to raise their objections brings to attention the powerlessness they feel under the administration’s decisions.