The 2012-2013 school year will witness a change to the usual yearly Charity Bash schedule, which previously kicked off following Thanksgiving break. Charity Bash will start during the last two weeks of February and continue into March.

Student Council sponsors and the administrators made the decision to move Charity Bash recently, but not made without a large amount of student, teacher, and administration input.

“We sent out a survey to all of the sponsors, and then we asked some of the sponsors to give the surveys to their actual members, so I would say, all total, we probably collected about 250 student surveys,” Christopher Bennett, Student Council sponsor and social studies teacher, said. “I was still on the fence going into that [calendar committee meeting], but once we got it on the calendar and took a look at how it looked, I thought it looked really good. There’s one major event every week.”

Bennett proposed the change during a calendar committee meeting that included several administrators and teachers. The meeting followed a discussion of potential changes for Charity Bash Bennett and Susan McBride, Student Council sponsor and science teacher, held with Ryan Rubenstein, assistant principal in charge of facilities and activities.

“Each year, after any big event, whether it be Homecoming, Turnabout, specifically in this case Charity Bash, I sit down with Bennett and McBride and we kind of do a review,” Rubenstein said. “One of the comments that came about his year was that we kind of felt that it had gotten a little bit stagnant, and that we wanted to try something new for next year and maybe try to move it to a different part of the year where maybe people aren’t as stretched.”

The event will not only move to February, but will also extend over a period of four weeks rather than just two weeks, as it has in past years. Bennett said he hopes to spread the events out more so more students are able to fit all of the activities in their schedules without becoming too stressed for time.

“More and more people were saying they were a little bit concerned about too many activities, too short an amount of time, [not being able to] get homework done,” Bennett said. “As it’s gotten bigger there’s just so many things going on and other clubs that are still looking for more things to do.

Besides changing the school-wide calendar, this decision will affect the plans of several different clubs. The poms team, for example, will be holding Mr. LZ in the winter when Charity Bash used to be.

Several Student Council committees will also have to reorganize to accommodate the change. They will have to plan the Turnabout dance at the same time as Charity Bash because the two events will be occurring at the same time next year. Bennett said this is one of a number of details Student Council will have to work out during the summer.

“Basically we’re just going to have to promote as much as possible because since it’s more spread out they’re not going to have a list of one week of full stuff where each day [has] a new event,” Nicole Bianchi, junior and next year’s Student Council Vice President of School Improvement, said. “It’ll definitely [require] a lot of organizing of the club, getting everything out there and put together.”

Though the process requires much planning and some restructuring, Bennett believes the change is for the better and will allow more student and faculty to attend the Charity Bash events and support the school efforts to raise money for a good cause.