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Back to School: Scheduling can be a monumental task
Saturday, August 28, 1999 By Eleanor Chute, Post-Gazette Education Writer
It looked like the perfect schedule -- until he saw that he had placed both calculus and advanced placement English in first period.
"I have to fix that," said Dennis Kukulski, Riverview High School assistant principal, taking an eraser to the sheet of paper posted on a cabinet. He was spending a summer morning polishing the schedules for about 650 students in seventh through 12th grades.
Ten students wanted both of those courses, and each is offered only once. AP English ended up in third period.
Many school administrators have spent much of the summer juggling schedules with the help of computer software, paper and pencils, magnetic boards and logic. Their goal is to schedule nearly all students for all the courses they want.
"I consider it the most important job in the school," said Hampton High School Principal Joseph Merhaut. "When you have 1,100 kids walk through the door and 70 teachers, everybody has to know where to go. If you don't have that done, you'll have major chaos."
Even with computers that can try unlimited combinations of schedules and readily identify conflicts, it's not easy.
Although a year has passed, Plum High School Principal John Ratesic, who schedules about 1,400 students, hasn't forgotten the nearly three hours he spent one Saturday morning trying to schedule a physics course that met for five days a week plus had two labs. He had to schedule three sections, but each time he tried, there were too many conflicts with students who already were placed into other classes.
"I couldn't believe it because it was a tripleton," said Ratesic.
"Tripleton" is scheduler's talk for a class that has three sections. Those typically create fewer conflicts than "singletons" which are just scheduled once.
This is the seventh article in an eight-part PG series examining a range of educational issues.
Previous articles:
Part I: A shortage of principals.
Part II: Non-Catholic families are finding Catholic schools a blessing
Part III: Ninth grade proves to be a pivotal year for youths
Part IV: Building good character through just a trait a week
Part V: Science classes trade textbooks for a hands-on approach
Part VI: D.A.R.E. is easy and free, but does it really work?
If band is offered only first period, then students in band can't take any other "singletons" offered that period. But many required courses are scheduled throughout the day, so band members can just take them another time.
North Allegheny Senior High School, for example, offers 25 sections of American government, a required course for juniors.
But of its more than 300 courses for 1,300 students, 43 courses are offered just once in the schedule. Students have eight class periods a day -- not counting lunch -- so obviously some singletons have to be scheduled in the same period. This year, two such singletons are orchestra and Advanced Placement statistics, both set for first period.
"Nobody in orchestra wanted AP statistics," said North Allegheny High School Principal Walter Sieminski. "If next year, 15 kids signed up for AP stats and also were in orchestra, I'd be a fool to keep them both first period.
"I start from scratch every year," said Sieminski. "This is strictly student-request-driven. Of course, I have to look at all of the other constraints placed on the schedule. The bottom line is I start with the students, and then I move forward."
Although the process varies a bit from school to school, it generally goes like this: Students in the spring are given a list of courses from which they can choose, meet with their counselors and turn in a list of choices.
These are entered into a computer program, which then tells administrators how many students want each class.
If too few students want a class, the class is dropped. The number of times the class will be offered is set based on the number of requests, available staff and space.
Then the administrator tries variations of a master schedule to get as many students as possible the classes they want, while at the same time keeping class sizes roughly balanced. No one wants to schedule 10 students in second-period algebra and 40 in third-period algebra.
On the first run on the computer of the proposed master schedule, 70 percent or more of the students may be tentatively scheduled.
The administrator begins making changes to try to bring that number to 90 percent or more. They usually can do an unlimited number of combinations. McKeesport Area Academic Principal John Bertoty figures that he does about 50 runs before he's satisfied.
The rest is done by hand, starting from computer printouts showing what the conflicts are. Sometimes students are added to a class the computer has deemed filled, or students are moved or are called to come up with another choice.
The system can get complicated.
With 1,600 students and more than 100 teachers to schedule in McKeesport Area, Bertoty has one of the larger high schools in the county.
The variations in his schedule include a vo-tech program, fitting in work-study programs, labs that take up one or two extra periods, accommodating students who take classes at the nearby Penn State University campus and mainstreaming special education students into regular classes.
In scheduling special education students, he has to be certain he doesn't put too many into one class or it will defeat the purpose of mainstreaming.
He also tries to put the planning period for all head coaches during the last period so they don't have to repeatedly miss a class to go to games and schedule the planning period of the senior class sponsor during a time when businesses would be open for phone calls.
And he has to keep track of room sizes, putting the larger computer class in the lab with 28 stations, not the one with 20.
One of the tricky parts is figuring out what class can be offered when.
Sometimes classes can't be offered the same period simply because the teacher isn't available. At Plum High School, the same teacher teaches the only two sections of AP calculus and all three sections of accelerated trigonometry.
Music programs can be difficult because they often involve a large number of students for one period.
"Band usually has the greatest number of kids. Very often kids in the AP courses are in the band," said Velma Saire, assistant superintendent of Quaker Valley.
Part of scheduling is knowing the pattern of what courses students select. Top level French courses typically may be placed in the same period as top level Spanish courses because few, if any, students take both.
At Plum, Principal John Ratesic said, "You couldn't very well schedule AP chemistry and AP European history the same period. Nor would you schedule Physics 2 with AP European history. And a Level 4 foreign language, you couldn't schedule in the same period with any of those."
Some complications arise when a student takes a different sequence than most of the class, such as a senior who might want a foreign language course typically taken by juniors. Or, in some cases, it's impossible to schedule band and orchestra, and the student has to choose.
Different schools have different ideas about how many students should be in a class. If 60 students want to take a class, some schools might schedule two sections of 30 while others would plan for three sections of 20.
But numbers and staff can make the math difficult.
This fall, for example, North Allegheny has teachers to cover six sections of upper-level Spanish classes. Sixty-three students signed up for Level 4, while 84 signed up for Level 3. Ideally, this would be seven sections, each class with about 21 students.
But with only six sections possible, Sieminski decided on three sections of Level 4 -- with about 21 students a class -- and three sections of Level 3 -- with about 28 students a class.
At Chartiers Valley High School, 18 students signed up for a college-credit English course new to the school and then the list grew to 30. "The word got out and boom. It was too late to go back and do anything," said Principal Timothy Young.
Some schools won't offer a class if fewer than 12 to 15 students sign up. Only four Plum students signed up for drafting, so that won't be offered this fall.
North Allegheny will offer a class if 15 request it. But it is still offering AP calculus BC even though only 13 signed up. "It's the most advanced math course we offer. If we didn't offer it, these highly talented math students wouldn't have a course to take," said Sieminski.
Schools put the top priority on seeing that students have the necessary graduation requirements, often scheduling seniors first.
While administrators have spent months designing the schedules, it's not over yet. Over the summer, some students have changed their minds, some took classes in summer school and some moved.
At Allderdice High School in Squirrel Hill, this past week was the traditional week of meetings with counselors, to discuss changes in class requests, fix scheduling conflicts and mistakes and answer any questions. Nearly 600 students -- more than a third of the student body -- showed up this week on four days, one for each class, set aside to meet with counselors.
Sharon Washington, Allderdice social worker and chair of the school's pupil services department, said parents and students are encouraged to come. "That cuts down later on on 'I didn't know."'
Eric Solomon of Squirrel Hill was dissatisfied that his 10th-grade son, Steven, was sent a schedule showing just empty blanks for third period. Solomon said he waited nearly four hours to see a counselor.
Washington said scheduling days typically are busy, and this year the school also has had computer problems and is adjusting to a new block schedule, which raised questions from parents.
"We're hoping that we'll get all of this squared away," so that when school opens on Sept. 7 "it will run very smoothly," Washington said.
Tomorrow: Architectural firms that specialize in school construction have a new sub-specialty -- pop psychology. They have come up with designs that they say will help prevent school shootings, bullying and other mayhem. Metal sunshades, strategically placed windows, atriums and skylights and the proper color of paint will help keep students feeling happy and welcome.
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