Yes, I think that regardless of the number of periods, long days are probably typical for kids in any school system who are doing a lot of things. So I’m not sure the problem could be solved by adding more hours to the school day.
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My D’s school day was 7:30 - 3:30 but with a 9th period class afterwards and sometimes 0 period for things like test prep. With ECs, she was never home before 6:30 and some days much later. It was definitely a very long day.
As an aside, I noticed that her school has since moved to a block schedule. That allows for more classes over the course of the school year.
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Our So Cal public HS (10 blocks from the beach) has no swim instruction/P.E. swim unit. 
I believe swimming was part of the curriculum decades ago, but has been cut due to insufficient staffing and facilities. So the ancient 25 yard 6 lane pool is only used for the swim and water polo teams.
Fun tradition, however. Each spring the varsity water polo girls challenge any football boys to a water polo game. Very entertaining! My daughter was the varsity goalie. I recall watching this event in her senior year. The boys requested to use floaties and were denied. It seems only 1 or 2 of the football players knew how to swim. 
So the boys strategized by having 3 non swimming players cheat and just hold the opposing goalie cage and wait for the ball to get passed in so they could slam it in the cage. My daughter first was mad that they were cheating, but ended up laughing and just getting out of the way. Don’t get me started on water polo concussions.
I think it was a great way to have athletes of different backgrounds learn about and appreciate other sports.
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I played club water polo in college and can imagine this scenario!
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My old high school had and still has a 7-period day. High school graduation requirements were and are 22 courses (including 2.5 for PE and health, which are the only high school requirements that could not overlap with college admission requirements) or at least 5.5 average per year, and state university minimums added to 15 courses or at least 3.75 average per year.
Students trying to do 4 of each of the 5 typical college-prep core subjects and 1 of art would fill 21 from those; adding PE and health would mean 23.5 courses, leaving 4.5 for additional electives. But that means that a theoretical 6-period high school with the same requirements would leave only 0.5 for additional electives.
How does this really work, since there are a limited number of hours in the day? With more classes, are fewer instructional hours devoted to each class? Or is it all from extra minutes squeezed out of having fewer passing periods in the school day?
I don’t have first hand experience since this happened after my D left but my understanding is that there are actually longer class periods but that classes don’t meet every day. More like a college schedule with some classes MWF, and some T/TH.
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Right, but how do the total instructional hours add up over the semester or quarter? That’s my question, not necessarily for you in particular, but for anyone whose school has gone through this transition.
My sons’ school day is divided into four 90-minute blocks. They take four courses per semester. The school requires 28 credits minimum to graduate, 6 of which are general electives. Even with extra elective slots many students struggle to fit in desired electives. Most courses are single section. Senior requests are considered first, freshmen last.
Our school has an A-B block schedule. 4 classes on A days and 4 different classes on B days. They take one semester of PE and one semester of health - usually in 9th grade. Lots of kids take PE and Health online over the summer before 9th to get it out of the way. The school day is 8:20-3:30. 23 credits are required for graduation.
Seems like another aspect of this is that if there is a choice of high schools with different numbers of class periods (and/or different amounts of non-academic requirements that consume class periods), then consideration of how many electives beyond the 4 years of 5 cores plus 1 year of art the student will have, and how likely the student is to want more electives can be a significant factor.
My kid’s school uses this same 8 class block schedule with 4x75min classes each day with a nice rotation (the ordering of the classes rotates so athletes don’t always miss the same class if they have to leave school early for games).
School mostly caps kids at 6 academic/arts classes and then reserves other two slots for some combination of health, study hall, college prep, PE. Generally works well but there ends up being a big difference between the part of the year they have study hall vs. the part of the year where they have health + college prep (losing 2-3 hrs per week).
S26’s school treated health/PE as a 7th period, but still with only 6 periods for academic/art classes there wasn’t enough room to fit 4 years of orchestra and 4 years of languages plus all desired electives.
Took one summer class at the High School (Chemistry before 9th grade) and three online classes with UC Scout (AP CS A in 9th grade, AP Physics C Mech + E&M now in 10th grade - worked especially well because waited to really tackle Mechanics until 6 weeks into Calc BC for the math background).
Don’t plan to take any additional online or summer classes in 11th or 12th grade to keep more time open for ECs/athletics.