Students have always counted down the school days until summer vacation. Along with second semester comes the excitement of knowing the school year is halfway over. Unfortunately, this year, second semester is longer than first semester by seven student attendance days.

This week-long disparity leads to many questions. Are the classroom requirements different between semesters? Are students being asked to go back to school too late into the summer? Should schools have more days off during second semester?

The calendar is constructed this way due to teacher institute days–state and Board of Education requirements–and various holidays.

After being made aware of the extra seven days, many students, including junior Domingo Ibarra, think it would make sense to adjust their schedule accordingly.

“I think I would have scheduled my harder classes in the spring semester because there would be more days to cover the more difficult material,” Ibarra said.

The additional days beg the question of whether or not class syllabi should be altered, especially for required classes. At Naperville North, every student is mandated to take a semester of Health Education. With more school days to complete compulsory, single-semester classes, some might expect students to perform better in those classes.

Clinton Hunter, a health teacher at NNHS, said this is not necessarily the case. Hunter, as well as the other health teachers at NNHS, have not seen a correlation between longer semesters and student’s grades.

However, he says he can feel a slight difference in his teaching.

During second semester, the health teachers are able to do a few more activities, but nothing that could change someone’s comprehensiveness or grade, according to Hunter. Most finals, including the Health Education final, are adjustable in terms of content. If something is not taught, it is simply omitted from the final.

“The final reflects what we teach, so if we spend less time on the respiratory system during unit two, we will have less questions on the final about it,” Hunter said.

Freshman Jacob Pollitt has not yet experienced a full second semester, but is also concerned about the imbalance in the number of days between first semester and second semester.

“We should be able to have more days off during second semester if it’s running longer than first and figure out how to make it more even while meeting the required number of days,” Pollitt said.

 Many district employees and NNHS teachers and administrators agree that this disparity, while not ideal, makes sense given state requirements and natural breaks of the holiday schedule in the United States.

Ron Helms, Assistant Principal of NNHS, said the reason the semesters are different in length is because of finals and winter break.

“Ideally it would make sense if the semesters were the same, but I’ve had almost 38 years at different schools and I don’t think they have ever been the same,” Helms said. “I know most of the time, districts in the same area like to be similar in beginning and release dates.”

Before a district spends four to six weeks creating a calendar, they want to make sure it is similar to other districts for the convenience of the families. When this happens, they have to keep other districts in mind so the calendars fall close.

If one district has a longer second semester, the other districts will as well, causing a domino effect. Helms also explained that about ten years ago, District 203 used to have even semesters, with finals occurring after winter break.

Now, the committee makes sure that final exams are before winter break. This, along with winter holidays, are a determining factor in scheduling the entire calendar, according to District 203 Deputy Superintendent Kaine Osburn.

“Although we keep in mind the other holidays, the falling of Christmas and New Year’s really determines when we can get out and what day of the week we get back to school,” said Osburn.

The later school can go in the week prior to Christmas, the more even the semesters will be. However, if Christmas is on a Monday or Tuesday, second semester will be longer than normal.

Many parents are also unaware of the slight change in semester length. Cynthia Rotter, mother of junior Michael Rotter, said she never realized that second semester was longer by a week. She said this might affect rides to and from school and even vacations.

“The time the school releases your kids always depends on days off in the winter, and it always seems late in the summer,” Rotter said.

This inconsistency between semesters, while perhaps confusing to students, seems to go unnoticed by many. Overall, the disparity does not have an adverse impact on teaching or student education, as seven extra days feel insignificant with the overall 2,200 formal days of calculated public schooling a student will attend in their lifetime.