The 2013-2014 school year will bring changes for Kennedy students. Kennedy is introducing SMART Lunch for students next year.

SMART Lunch will include an 80-minute lunch period for students. During this time students are able to attend seminars that pertain to their classes. Students will also have the opportunity to make up missed tests during this time and ask questions.

This new schedule brings changes to other class times as well. School will now start at 7:55, as opposed to this year starting at 8:00. Another change will include classes will be shorter. Each class period will be 50 minutes long instead of the 55-minute time slot this year.

Another change that is under discussion by the school district, would be that school would be counted as hours instead of days. This would change the make up schedules for things like snow days.

This change will be up to each school district across Iowa with how they want to approach this new schedule. The Iowa Department of Education is allowing all Iowa school districts to create a calendar based on days or based on hours. This schedule then would have to be approved.

To find out more on SMART Lunch and other schedule changes for the upcoming school year, check out our February issue of the Torch later this month.