SAN JOSE, CALIF. — Unlike previous years, there is no first-period class for Physical Education (P.E.) at Silver Creek High School. Changing it from P.E. being apart of all seven periods to just six.

“Having P.E. first was cold and it wasn’t fun having to run first thing in the morning. Being barely awake for P.E. sucked,” Jayden Phan, a junior at Silver Creek said. 

Jacob Sandoval, one of the P.E. teachers said, “It’s hard for me to speculate what students like or do not like, but I think students prefer to sleep in.”

Khiem Nguyen, a freshman who has P.E. seventh period said, “I don’t have a first period, but I can imagine how trash first period P.E. would be. Imagine having to wake up and like 30 minutes later you’re playing football or running two miles.” 

Kelly Daugherty, Silver Creek’s principal, said the reason that first period P.E. was removed is “because there are four male teachers and only two female teachers. There needs to be coverage for the locker rooms since there needs to be a teacher in the locker rooms. So we shortened the amount of periods from seven to six in order to have girls’ locker rooms covered.”

Daugherty adds: “The reason we didn’t have one through six periods versus two through seven is because 540 freshmen don’t have a first period.”

Sandoval also explained that “it really has to do with safety and supervision issues. We really want two sets of eyes in locker rooms ideally.”

The change from having seven periods of P.E. to only six periods, being two through seventh, was necessary to keep locker rooms safe. And it seems like this change was to the liking of students anyway.