Monday is the new deadline to select SOAR support periods for Tuesday and Thursday. Teachers can also sign students up for specific support options on Thursday and Friday of the week before.

The change to teachers signing students up is called “priority days.” On Tuesdays, only the Math, Communication Arts, Fine Arts, and World and Classical Languages departments can call students in for SOAR. On Thursdays, only the Science, Social Studies, PE, and CTE departments can call students in for SOAR.

These changes are aimed at decreasing the number of students who aren’t signed up and better distribute where students are being called in for, said Carrie McFadden, Assistant Principal of Operations at Naperville Central.

“Especially on weeks that we had two supports, [the number of] students picking their support for the second one falls off,” McFadden said. 

One week, there were 910 students that did not sign up for SOAR support. According to McFadden, this is due to the repetitive sign-up process.

“It’s kind of like ‘we did this already, now we have to do it again,’” McFadden said. “Hopefully this will help since they’re all gonna do it at one time.”

Freshman Eleanor Danno, junior Sara Tiwary and senior Megan Anderson said that they think the changes makes singing up worse.

“If a kid takes a retake on Wednesday and wants to change their support for Thursday, that might not be an option anymore,” freshman Eleanor Danno said.

Junior Reham Fahad and sophomore Andrew Lazovski also opposed to the sign-up change.

McFadden knows that there are concerns and encourages students to email her if they want to change their SOAR choice for Thursday.

“On a Wednesday, a teacher might need a student or a student [may ask] to be moved and I make those changes,” McFadden said. “Our attempt is to try and make it consistent for both teachers and students.”

The addition of priority days, however, has received more positive feedback. The goal is to make sure students can get help in any class they are struggling in, McFadden said.

“The math department is picking the students that they want to see and then other teachers don’t have an option because they didn’t get up at 5:00 in the morning,” McFadden said.

Biology teacher Amy Hastings says she always has around five students she wants to call in but can’t because they’ve been called in by another teacher.

“There are definitely teachers that are over-eager and will sign up the same students every week,” Hastings said. “I think priority days will definitely help with that.”

McFadden is “definitely up for suggestions” on these changes, which can be emailed to her at [email protected].