Ida B. Wells administrators are not meeting student needs when organizing flex. From structure and frequency to student and teacher needs, IBW students are demanding a better system.

Inconsistent scheduling is one of the biggest problems with flex at IBW. There are approximately four flex days every month: two days, every other week. Students often find this confusing as flex flips between starting on Wednesdays or Thursdays. This inconsistency in what day flex starts is due to a policy that requires flex to start on an A day. 

In addition, it’s difficult to predict when flexes will be; sometimes it’s two weeks in a row, sometimes every other week. All the confusion around what day of which week flex is on, culminates into a planning nightmare. 

Many IBW juniors and seniors remember fondly the days of afternoon flex, where students could leave school early if they needed to for mental health, sports, or other reasons. Students also often had the choice to stay late after school (if they had the time) to finish things they often didn’t have time for in a (now) short flex period. However, in the 2023-24 school year, IBW administrators changed flex from being after classes to between first and second period. 

This raised a myriad of issues surrounding flex.

The length of flex is not meeting student needs. Many tests and labs are structured around having a 90-minute period to complete them, and even then many students rush to finish on time. “Being a science teacher, and trying to have this be a time for students to be able to make up things like labs, 40 minutes is not enough,” said IBW science teacher Annaleah Wonder. 

Teachers are not the only ones with complaints about flex length. In a survey collected during the 2023-2024 school year by Data Science student Mattew Dinh, 76% of the 59 sophomores, juniors and seniors surveyed wanted flex to be longer.

Another issue with flex is moving it from the afternoon to the morning. Morning flex is not only a problem for students who need time to work, but also for those who don’t. For students who need to get work done, morning flex constrains their time to the 40-minute block between first and second period. With afternoon flex, they would be able to stay after school and complete their work, provided they got permission from their teacher. 

The need for an afternoon flex is also supported by the same survey collected by Dinh, showing that 89.7% of students surveyed found flex to be more helpful in the afternoon.

For students who don’t have anything missing and who don’t need extra help, they’re stuck in the school building with nothing to do except hang out with their friends. “There’s half people in here really trying to get stuff done and half who, either don’t have anywhere else to go…There’s definitely some distractibility,” said Wonder. 

Tutor time during flex is also lost due to school events like clubs or assemblies. “Sometimes there’s an assembly instead [of flex],” said Wonder. 

“I like assemblies, but I don’t like that they take away from academic time,” said Max Tresise, an IBW social studies teacher. In the 2024-2025 school year, we have already seen three flex periods taken up by assemblies. 

“School spirit is important, but also, assemblies shouldn’t be mandatory,” said Adrian Wordley, an IBW junior. In addition to assemblies, many clubs take place during flex, some in which attendance is mandatory, such as the Improv Team. 

The lack of consistency in flex time scheduling and usefulness, as well as the length being too short, limits students’ ability to be productive and get personal help. “What I’d prefer to use flex for is to help students with one-on-one support [sic] but we tend to run out of time,” said Wonder. This is concerning because not every student has access to or time for after-school tutoring programs like Guardian Scholars, an after-school program organized by IBW staff volunteers, or the Fat City Cafe.

For several years IBW had afternoon flex, which many people preferred. Despite many students’ and teachers’ preferences, the administration had a reason to remove it. The primary reason is: many students chose to go home during flex rather than use the time to talk to teachers or retake tests. The administration had no way to stop students from leaving campus.

But was that really so bad? While it’s true that students are using flex more effectively since they have to stay near school for it, it’s also led to an uptick in students’ resentment towards admin and the school. 

Currently, flex is a problem, but what can be done about it?

Certainly, everyone has their own dream flex. This ranges from every day first thing in the morning before any classes “to once a week at the end of the day,” as suggested by Elise Gorsegner, an IBW junior. However, what almost everyone agrees on is that the current system is inefficient. While there are different factors that play into flex like student-athletes, necessary learning time and teachers’ schedules to consider, one universal thing is desired: flex at least once a week. 

We’re making a suggestion: Thursday and Friday flex, every week, before lunch. This would solve many of the current issues teachers and students have brought up. Primarily, the issue of overtime. 

While there is the issue of blurring the lines between teacher and student lunch hours, that could arguably be good. Many teachers leave their rooms open for lunch, and those unwilling to have students in their room during their lunch hour could simply ask them to leave. 

This also solves the disorganization problem that many teaching departments face. With frequent flex periods, teachers would have an easier time organizing within their department, which would in turn benefit students. 

While there is always the issue that students won’t use flex “efficiently or effectively”, putting flex before lunch minimizes the chance of students going home or wasting flex time. Students who don’t have work to do, who would ordinarily be unproductive and/or disrupt others, could go take a longer lunch, while students who need more time could finish an extensive test in a quiet and calm room. 

Whether in favor of our proposed plan or interested in some other mystery flex plan that students and teachers agree on, this semester needs flex needs to change.