Next legislative session, Jean Leising, Indiana state Republican Senator, will propose a bill that would require schools to begin after the third Monday of August in the 2018-19 school year. Currently, CHS is set to reopen on Aug. 14, a full week prior to the bill’s proposed school start date. Despite failing at the last legislative session in 2016 with a tie, Leising said she hopes the bill will succeed this upcoming year.

The bill was created in an attempt to extend the length of summer by directly targeting the rising trend in which schools move towards the balanced calendar system. The system increases the number of days in breaks by extending the school year into the traditional summer months.

Sophomore Indu Chatterjee said she supports the bill because she prefers a longer summer than longer breaks. 

“It is kind of hard to get stuff done [if we had longer breaks]. One week or two weeks isn’t enough time in some cases. Some things that I plan to get done are more than a few weeks long,” she said.

On the other hand, sophomore Hari Ganeshan said he prefers to have multiple longer breaks rather than a single longer summers.

Ganeshan said, “I kind of prefer [a week long] fall break over [an extra week in] summer. I can catch up on extra-curriculars and start studying for finals. Summer is already long enough that you can do whatever you need to do. Having that break in the school year really helps.”

While students may prefer longer or shorter breaks, Joe Schaller, assistant principal of operations, said if the bill was passed, the school would probably add a week at the end of the school year, rather than taking the days off of breaks or other downtimes for students and teachers. 

“[The bill] would create a common calendar. Maybe that is what they are trying to do, but our school board and our people should be able to determine what is best for use … there are differences and reasons why [schools] would want to start at different times,” Schaller said.