Personalized e-mails sent out Aug. 8 gave students their class schedules before school started. But the times of the class meeting periods were wrong, causing confusion among students who thought administrators had repealed the 4:45 ending time and eight-period class day students fought hard for last year.

In reality, school will still end at 4:45 p.m. – not 5 p.m. as the e-mailed schedules stated — and will now start 10 minutes later than before, at 8 a.m. instead of 7:50.

Acting General Studies Principal Mr. Roy Danovitch said the times were wrong on the e-mails because the schedules had been pasted onto last year’s bell schedule template by mistake.

“The purpose of … the e-mail was to give everyone a chance to see their schedules, to see their conflicts, to see what choices they would have to make so they could make decisions before school starts and not have a whole tumult on day one,” Judaic Studies Principal Rabbi Leubitz said, adding each student would receive a corrected schedule at orientation next week.

Classes will all be 45 minutes long instead of last year’s 47-minute classes, with eight meetings Monday through Thursday and five meeting on Fridays.

Mr. Danovitch said that academic articles reported a relationship between starting school later and improved student learning.

“There’s obviously a sign that kids are gaining more and learning more [from later start times] and it just makes sense,” Mr. Danovitch said. “It makes sense for the classes, it makes sense for them and for commuting reasons.”

In addition to shortening class periods by two minutes, the shorter day was accomplished by taking a few minutes off lunch, now 45 minutes long Monday through Thursday compared to the 51 minute long lunch Mon. through Wednesday last year.

Junior Jordan Banafsheha contributed to this story.