For the fourth consecutive semester, SHS final exams were cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic, this time primarily because of the Omicron surge. In an email sent out on Friday, Jan. 7, SHS principal Tim Kenney announced the cancellation. Teachers would not give finals during their class exam periods, instead using the time to provide additional grade-boosting activities and allow students to catch up on missing work. However, the exam week schedule would still run, with classes starting on Tuesday Jan. 18 and occurring for ninety minute periods.

“If you are ill, use the time to get well. If you are helping someone else who is ill, focus your attention there,” Kenney wrote in the cancellation email. “School is important, but your well-being is the top priority.” 

The decision was made at a department chair meeting on Jan. 5. The district-wide Covid surge that occurred during and after winter break accounted for this decision.

“We had started to experience a noticeable uptick in absences related to positivity and figured Omicron was here,” Kenney said in an interview. “We also knew, going into winter break, that there would be lots of family gatherings and those kinds of things and we were expecting to come out on the backside of winter break in the midst of the same surge that we were seeing worldwide with this variant.”

In addition to concern for the physical wellbeing of students and staff, the decision was also made from a mental health perspective. School adminstrators did not want the stress of final exams to add to the heightened stress of the pandemic.

“The main motivation was overall wellbeing. For some kids that was physical health and not mental health, for some they were physically fine but the stress of the pandemic,” Kenney said. “We just wanted people to have the opportunity to do what they can and still take care of themselves, from a physical and mental standpoint.”

Because of the quick turnaround between the cancellation decision and exam week, teachers were forced to quickly make new plans for their classes to replace final exams. District communication was essential.

“I think [the decision] was communicated well enough,” said Eric Gietzen, English teacher. “Within a couple of days of being told by my department chair, I had a pretty clear understanding of how I was going to move forward. I was not confused at all about the parameters of that week after it had been redesigned.”

According to Kenney, he has received largely positive reactions from parents and students. While students undeniably experienced less stress due to the cancellation of finals, some students and staff wonder whether that should have been the ultimate goal.

“I understand the justification and I’m certain that students felt less stressed,” Gietzen said. “I also think there’s an important place for stress in students’ lives and that we shouldn’t remove all stress, because it doesn’t get less stressful after high school.”

“I think overall everyone was pretty neutral or happy about it,” said Elaine Fraser, senior. “But I do think that later, when people do have to take finals, it’s going to be like ‘oh shoot I kinda wish that I had practiced this before now… I think [finals are] a very important thing to experience.”

Community members have raised concerns about students slacking off in the time between winter break and the start of second semester. Students who were at in-person school who didn’t have missing work tended to have minimal schoolwork to complete during this time.

 “A question that I was asked was, it just seemed like some kids got off easy, and they did. It very well may appear that they did,” Kenney said. “But that means that they were in a position where they were all caught up and didn’t have stuff to do. For the students who did that, I just say congratulations on a job well done for the first semester.”