Overview of the Scheduling Process

Trying to wrap up the registration process has been quite challenging this year, but I wanted to take a moment to thank all of you who have met with me and also those who have been flexible about rescheduling appointments (some 3 or more times) so that I can try to meet everyone's needs.  As I have been meeting with students, a common question is why do we have to do this so early since it is just the start of the 2nd semester.  You are right, it is early, but it will take every bit of the time remaining to get the schedules ready for next year.  As a result, I wanted to give you all a quick overview of the process to try to help you a little more about what happens and what the next steps involve.

As you are aware, students receive teacher recommendations, discuss their course plans with their parents and then select their classes online.  I then meet with every student 1:1 to review the course selections.  I have more students to meet with from all three grades and will be working hard to finish this up this week.  Some of you also owe me forms, so please make sure you get your needed signatures and return those forms to me this week!

All of the course selections need to be finalized, ideally, by the end of this week and officially given to the administration as the "final" registration requests.

Once the final requests are submitted by all of the counselors the administration (principal and assistant principals) will look at the numbers for all of the courses requested to determine what, if any, classes 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 (hopefully before the end of the year) 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.