By Kendall Harshberger
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Every Monday and Friday, sophomore Emily Garman gets up at 5 a.m. for her 5:30 a.m. swim practice. From 7:50 a.m. to 3:05 p.m. she is in school. Then, she has a daily swim practice until 6 p.m. After that, she goes home and does all her schoolwork.

“I’m usually up to 10:30 or 11 doing my homework,” she said.

According to NYDailyNews.com, President Barack Obama recently spoke of his interest in increasing school hours; research indicates the increased time would be spent on core academics, more time for teachers and more enrichment time for students.

In the article, Obama said kids in the United States spend too little time in the classroom and that puts them at a disadvantage to students in other countries. In some schools, such as the Clarence R. Edwards Middle School in Boston, three hours have been added to the school day as an experiment. Early results are positive.

However, Garman said she thinks increasing school hours would have a negative impact on herself and others.

“(Lengthening school days) would be absolutely terrible. I have no time to do my homework anyways. I’d completely fail,” she said. “Just in general, no one wants to go to school longer than they’re supposed to.”

Principal John Williams said he thinks there are pros and cons to the prospect of a longer school day.

“But, in my opinion, more is not necessarily better,” he said. “It’s what you’re doing, where you’re doing it and who you’re doing it with that really matters.”

Williams said if CHS were ever to lengthen its days, sacrifices would have to be made.

“Carmel would adjust, but some after-school programs would have to be adjusted,” he said.

But according to Williams, sacrifices wouldn’t just have to be made on students’ activities. “How would we pay for (longer school days)? We can’t just ask teachers to work extra hours and not pay them,” he said.

“If this program was ever to be used,” Williams said, “some things would have to be worked out first.”

For now, Garman said she’s just going to keep managing her schedule as is.

“If it happens, it happens,” she said. “I just really hope it doesn’t.”