The Scheduling Process

It has occured to me (through many of your questions) that most students don't really know or understand how the schedule is created. I thought it might be helpful if I give you a quick overview of the scheduling process. (I am saying quick because it is actually boring and is known to cause massive headaches for those trying to put it all together and make it work for every student.)

By now, nearly everyone has selected their classes using the online registration system. (And if you didn't enter in your requests, I am in the process of calling you in individually.) The counselors are meeting one-on-one with juniors. (Thank you to all of the juniors and junior parents who made the time to come in and meet with me. I really enjoyed it and have been thrilled with all the "repeat" visits from the junior students since our meetings.) During these meetings we are reviewing the courses selected for senior year and making certain that all requirements for graduation are being met. I have also started going through all of the registration requests submitted by "my" sophomores and freshman to make certain that the courses selected make sense based upon the previous classes and teacher recommendations. After I finish going through all of the requests I will meet personally with any of you for whom I have questions regarding the courses selected. All of this needs to be finalized, ideally, by the end of this week and officially given to the administration as the "final" registration requests.

I am concerned with how the course selections will play out because of the cuts coming next year. As you may have heard, we are expected to lose 7 teachers. This might not sound like a lot, but when consider that each teacher has 5 classes that means there are 35 sections worth of classes that are not being offered next year that were there this year. Or, to put it another way, that is approximately 850 "seats" that won't be there next year. Why does this matter? Think about when you came in at the beginning of the 1st or 2nd semester asking to make changes to your schedule and how hard it was to find open classes that we could move you into. Now, take away 850 more seats and imagine how hard it will be to make any changes. I am not trying to be full of doom and gloom, but this is simply our reality. It is also why I cannot stress enough the importance of making sure you are confident in your requests.

Once the final requests are submitted by all of the counselors at the end of this month the administration (principal and assistant principals) will look at the numbers for all of the courses selected to determine what, if any, courses do not have enough students signed up to be able to offer the class. After they figure this out they will provide that information back to the counselors with a list of students impacted and we will work with those students and their alternates list to find a suitable replacement course.

The administration will also begin working to determine the total number of sections of each class (for example English 1's) needed to meet the demand. They will then work with computer services to create a schedule that will create the smallest number of conflicts possible. This is a MUCH bigger challenge than most people would imagine. For example, if a class like AP Computer Science is only offered 1 time in the day, then they have to figure out what students want to take that class and try to make sure that the time of day selected to offer the course will not conflict with any other classes - especially any other classes that are only offered once in a day (like Band, Choir, or AP Foreign Languages).

Eventually they will create a schedule and "lock" it in place. When that happens they will then come back to the counselors with a list of all of the kids with conflicts in their schedules. In some cases, we are able to make minor adjustments - move a few classes around and make the schedule work. In other instances, we will have to work with the student to make tough decisions about what classes they do or do not want to take and use the alternates to find other courses that would work and still meet requirements toward graduation.

And that's it - we will ultimately get the schedule set just how we want it and hopefully all of you will pass all of your classes 2nd semester so that we don't have to go back and add anything into your schedule or change classes that you no longer meet the pre-requisites for, but all of those types of changes will happen after the final grades are submitted in June.

I hope that helps you to understand what is going on with the scheduling and registration process. It is a long and tedious process and I appreciate your patience.