The Scheduling Process

Each year students have questions about how the schedule will be created from the registration requests that they submit. 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 working on picking classes and meeting with you regarding electives.) I met individually with all of my juniors and many of your parents. I have also started going through all of the registration requests submitted by "my" sophomore and freshmen students 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 freshmen and sophomore requests I will meet personally with any students for whom I have questions regarding the courses selected. All of this needs to be finalized by the end of this month and officially given to the administration as the "final" registration 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) that are needed to meet the demand. They will then work to create a schedule with computer services 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.

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.