The 2026-2027 school year at Moon Area High School will experience major changes. From the stadium being renovated to replacing Skyward with a new platform for parents and students to access their grades called Focus. But this isn’t the change most people are talking about at Moon. The upcoming school year students will experience an eight-period day schedule instead of seven. Moon High School is actually one of the last schools to make this change in the area as schools like Peters Township, Mount Lebanon, North Allegheny, and more who have already had this eight-period school day for a while now.

With an extra class added to next year, this creates opportunities for students to take more classes that they would’ve never taken before. Moon is very fortunate to provide students with a multitude of classes. Students can take elective classes in departments like technology, music, business, computer science, family and consumer science, and so much more, which gives students a wide variety of classes to chose from. The extra class added in gives students the ability to pick an elective in a department that they never had the chance to try before. This also could lead them to know what classes they do not like before going to college and trying it out for the first time there.

However, some people criticize this change due to shorter class time that could take away time for things like tests, projects, or work. Classes this year are 48 minutes long and next year the classes will be shortened to around 44 minutes. For students taking rigorous classes where every second matters when taking a test, this could potentially play a major factor in their test taking skills. Hopefully teachers will recognize this change and shorten tests to accommodate for the shortened class period. This will be a big change for not just students but also teachers who need to change the workload they give students in a class period.

With all the changes added to Moon in the upcoming year, no one quite knows how smooth the transitions will be. However, the staff and administration ensure that all these changes will benefit Moon although they might seem uncomfortable right now for students. The first year of any big change will be different and maybe even hard to adapt to. As the year goes on, students will become accustomed to the new schedule and have a whole new way of going through their days.