Persuasive
Dear Prosper High School,
Let me start off by introducing myself. I am Alex Wells a grade 12 student that currently attends our beautiful Prosper High School. It has caught my attention that there has been a huge controversy on the topic of having a four-day school week. Many students have been presenting this argument and I personally have reached out to tell you about the concerns of the high school as well as to know your opinion on this topic. Whether you will accept or reject this proposal.
After examining various perspectives on this topic one statistics graph really stood out to me. The Prosper school budget is pretty high at the moment, especially when it is compared to a 4 day week. There is quite a difference for all three categories. If the school has more money left instead of spending more on transportation, operations and maintenance they have extra money left to make the school better. With that money they can help benefit the school in many ways. They can get new laptops so that students can have the best experience when working on class activities online, make the art program even better, these kind of things will encourage more student involvement. Plus having one less day can maybe motivate students to join extracurricular activities.
Looking at the website fastpoll.com I came to a realization that parents seriously do not want to have a 4 day school week, this is due to the significant difference between the parents who say no compared to yes. But if we look down the poll website we see that 82% of teachers are in favour of a 4 day week. If we look at the next statistic it shows a close decision of students between yes and no. For the students that have voted there is a 2 percent difference between yes and no. Meaning this is a huge deal for kids. But for the parents, they are not the ones in school, it is the staff and students, it does not make too much sense for parents to have a say in this topic because they are not the ones teaching or studying inside the building. For teachers one less day can give them more time to mark and get refreshed to teach the following week to the best of their abilities. But for students it is also helpful because as @hoops79 said, it is a hard cycle to repeat day in and day out, so that cushion of having 3 days off really can help a student achieve better due to the reduction of the load from school. Because as academic journal states, “sleep deprivation can also affect emotions and academic performance”.
One last thing I would like to touch on is the amount of content we are learning. Of course if we take one day out of the week that means one less day of learning a topic which can really affect the whole unit system. But what has been proposed is a new schedule. Regularly we have 65 minute periods but with the revised schedule breaks are shorter, lunch is also shorter and classes are 18 minutes longer. If we calculate class time increase we can do 18 multiplied by the 5 blocks. That means everyday we learn 90 minutes more which means content can still be covered. So class time should not be a problem.
First of all I would like to say that I appreciate the time you took out of your day to read my letter. I hope that after analyzing all the different perspectives and reasons on the four-day week we come to a consensus. Once again thank you very much. If you have any questions or concerns please don’t hesitate to contact me. My email is alexwells@hotmail.com or my phone number 403-123-4567.
Sincerely, Alex Wells.