Changing The Tire With The Car Still Moving...

Here we are at the start of a new semester. In some ways the time has flown by, but in other ways it's taken a while. In either case, on Monday students will begin their new semester. For some of them, it will mean different classes and different teachers. However, for most students the majority of their schedule will be unchanged as students typically enroll in yearlong classes.

At the same time everyone is gearing up for the new semester, we are also enrolling students for the 2010-11 school year. That's the way it goes in the business of schooling, you're preparing for next year even though you're only halfway through the current school year. Hence, the analogy to changing a tire while the car is still moving.

I want to take this opportunity to remind students and parents to choose their classes carefully. Guidance counselors and teacher will be offering the same advice. Please heed it.

Over the next few weeks, we will be looking at more than 10,000 course requests from our high school students. We take all of those course requests and determine staffing based upon requests. If there are enough students interested in a course to offer it, we do so. If there is not enough student interest, the course doesn't run.

We then take all of those course requests and determine the 375+ sections that will be needed within our master schedule. And then we will build a master schedule that 'fits' those sections into an 8:00 - 3:05 school day.

The aspect of creating the master schedule that takes the greatest emotional toll in these difficult economic times is creation of a layoff list. Each of the past six years we have been in the downsizing mode, requiring layoffs from nearly all of our bargaining groups. That's why we need you to choose classes carefully. It affects people's livelihood.

In a downsizing mode, we have to eliminate sections with low enrollment and collapse sections when possible. That creates far less flexibility in the master schedule than we had just a few years ago. It also means that when school begins in the fall we cannot accommodate schedule changes except in the rarest of circumstances.

So again I ask you, please choose your courses carefully becuase what you decide in the next few weeks will be reality in the fall of 2010. Good luck!