HART COUNTY — Hart County High School has seen a reduction in numbers of disciplinary problems this school year after going to a period schedule from a block schedule for the first time.

Eulin Gibbs, the principal of the school, said shorter class periods have resulted in less time for students to become inattentive in class, which has led to fewer disciplinary problems.

The school has switched to offering seven 50-minute class periods a day from four 90-minute classes. The block schedule featured two semesters, but under the period schedule students take classes year-round. The overall number of school days per academic year is the same with both schedules.“The kids were lethargic,” Gibbs said. “There was a loss of quality instructional time on the block schedule.”

The high school’s faculty took a survey in Sept. 2007 and found that about half of the faculty members favored changing to a period schedule. The biggest challenge with the new schedule will be for teachers to teach material at a slower pace, because they are teaching classes all year instead of for just one semester, said David Hicks, the county school superintendent.

“It was a challenge for our teachers,” Hicks said. “That was the biggest concern I had.”

Danny Schuster, 16, of Bowersville said he is OK with the new schedule, but it requires that students do more homework. The eleventh-grader also said it is more difficult to keep up with work related to additional subjects.

Hicks also said that under the block schedule, there was not enough time for review and modification of the course because teachers had to cram a yearlong course into one semester.

Avery Sokol, 14, a tenth-grader from Hartwell, said he does not like the period schedule as much as the block schedule.

“It is not a drastic change,” Sokol said. “There is more homework and less class time to learn things.”