The Revamped Centaur Plus Has Arrived: CP Flex

 The start of the 2021-2022 school year marked the death of Centaur Plus. But it was also the birth of a brand new, completely different, super exciting activity, called CP Flex! Or was it? How different is this new study period that’s replacing Centaur Plus? Well, not that different. It’s essentially the same as Centaur Plus in its purpose and function, but there are some changes. Instead of CP Flex being twice a week for short sessions, it’s once a week on Wednesdays for 40 minutes. In addition, CP Flex does not allow extended lunch, which is when students with a sufficient grade point average could schedule extra lunch time instead of a study session for Centaur Plus/CP Flex.

These new changes were implemented with the school’s new goal of having CP Flex being something that’s exciting for the students. To fill their CP Flex time, new activities have been created, such as lessons about real-life skills: stocks/finances, credit recovery, and more. The school’s philosophy is that allowing extended lunch to continue would undermine their goal for students to be excited about CP Flex, and that fewer people would sign up for new activities. Even the newly created name – CP Flex – was created with the idea of sounding fun.

However, despite the school’s intentions, there has been a lot of pushback against CP Flex. Some 859 students (39% of the student population) have signed a petition to reinstate extended lunch as an option in CP Flex. The leaders of the petition, Emile Bragard, Lila Bragard, and Benjamin Kurtz also wrote a letter to the administration to make their case for the return of extended lunch. Their main reasons included that it took away a positive reward system for students to get good grades, it overcrowded classrooms, which is a COVID-19 risk, and that it lead to students being scheduled in a classroom that they don’t want to be in. This then hurts the overall classroom environment because there are a lot of distracted or apathetic students in their assigned room. 

As the school year progresses, we can only wait and see how students’ opinions about CP Flex will change, and if changes will be made to the current version of it. Hopefully, a consensus can be reached and CP Flex will smoothly become the new normal.