Scheduling "Fun"

On Friday the WKHS administration officially "locked" the master schedule into place and handed it over to the counselors. What this means is that they have determined what time of day and in which room each class will meet during the school day to try to fit the schedule with the most student requests possible. They ran all of your requests through the computer to obtain as high of a match rate as possible.

And now, the "fun" part starts. Unfortunately, everyone's schedule requests do not work exactly like we had hoped. As counselors we are now going through each schedule that didn't match by hand to try to figure out if there is a solution and what possible options we can use to make a schedule fit together. I spent a large part of the weekend pouring over schedules and still have a long ways to go. Needless to say I have a lot of work to do and will likely have to continue calling down some of you to talk about back up choices based upon the conflicts in your schedule. This is never easy and I know it is disappointing when you don't get all of the classes that you wanted, so I promise that I am doing the best I can to make everything work together.

There are many changes to the schedule and your course requests due to upcoming cuts. For example, all Family & Consumer Science (FCS) classes have been eliminated. This means that if you had requested Healthy Cuisines, it has been cut out of your course requests as it will not be offered next year at WKHS. There have also been cuts related to Art (all Craft courses have been eliminated) and French (French 4 and AP French will now only be offered at TWHS) and many other areas have decreased sections available for the classes which can increase the possibility that two classes will only be offered at the same time (for example, I know that this happened with Orchestra & AP Spanish). Clearly, this isn't easy and we are doing the best we can to adjust to the changes as they come our way.

In the past there was a general expectation that all students in grades 9, 10, and 11 would take at least 6 courses each semester and that seniors would maintain at least 5 classes each semester. There is no formal written policy which requires this, so all students are STRONGLY encouraged to take at least 5 classes each semester plus the 2 PE classes. This would mean that if a student took the minimum recommended courses that he/ she would graduate from high school with 20.5 credits. If you are considering a 4-year college, we STRONGLY encourage you to take MORE than the 5 course minimum. The goal of working with recommendations as opposed to requirements is that we do not want to force students into courses that he/she hates and would therefore perform poorly in because of this lack of interest. We would rather you utilize your extra time in meaningful ways such as community service, clubs or organizations of interest, athletics, or a part-time job - all of which will add meaning to your college application. Plus, students that are sitting in classes that they do not want to be taking are preventing other students from taking the same class that is of significant interest to them.

I also know that as I continue calling down students to talk about their conflicts everyone else wants to stop by and find out where their classes fall during the day and I am BEGGING you to wait until exam week before we start looking at your classes. And to answer some of the questions that I hear every year at this time, no, I am sorry you can not have a copy of your schedule and no, it is not set in stone, so even though it might look perfect to you now, I can't guarantee that it will be exactly the same next year when we start up again. Thanks for your patience!