A candid and honest conversation with public school students and the chief of education. One Simon Sanchez High School student speaking out for her fellow Sharks, advocating for their future amid the challenge of double-sessions, as they continue to be without a home.

The school communities of John F. Kennedy High School and Simon Sanchez High School are feeling the strain of sharing a single campus under a double-session schedule. For the Islanders, this means starting school as early as 6am and scrambling for off-campus locations to host events like Christmas concerts.

For the Sharks, who still don’t have a permanent campus, it means ending their school days as late as 5pm, the same time most working adults clock out.

Andrea Eliana, a senior at Simon Sanchez High and representative of the Islandwide Board of Governing Students (IBOGS), has been speaking out about the struggles students face in keeping extra-curricular activities alive.

She said, “With that, we have sports where double session causes to have to go wake up from 6 o’clock and do practice until 10 am–and then they have to go back to their house prepare to go to school, and then they have things after school that they have to prepare from 6 pm to 10 pm, and it’s hard  to do that with the added homework with our classes.”

This schedule has been disrupting student development for two years - a situation GDOE superintendent Dr. Kenneth Swanson says he isn’t.

“I know how important it is, and I agree activities that go along with being in high school in an American society are sometimes more important than the academic classes, and some of the things that you learn and do in those activities are where you end up career-wise," he said.

Swanson has already vowed to separate the two schools by next school year. During a recent virtual GDOE meeting, he shared two potential solutions: developing a temporary campus on or near the current Simon Sanchez grounds or implementing double-sessions with F.B. Leon Guerrero Middle School once it reopens.

For Eliana and some of her fellow Sharks, she says double-sessions at FBLG are better than going to a school farther away - still, their true preference is clear. 

“We don’t want to move farther–and we really just want our campus back," she said.

Swanson promising to work closely with the Sharks, and conservatively estimates that the new Simon Sanchez High will open its doors in two years once construction begins.