When the priority of the School Board of Education is money driven, it is the time to change this policy to satisfy the people who are actually affected by class scheduling: students and teachers.

As an open campus IB and AP school, many hands-on classes, Northtown doesn’t need a reduced amount of time to do certain classes or passing time. Block scheduling is in place and is working for students and teachers alike. To take away time, for the sake of money, would be catastrophic to our learning styles and processes.

The Schedule Committee came to Northtown on Thursday, April 14 to explain in detail their proposals for change. Their proposals consisted of 7-period, 5-period, “half-and-half”, and trimester scheduling.

All of these plans are great and have many strong benefits for a middle school or another high school. But for Northtown it simply won’t succeed.

Unfortunately, the weaknesses of the procedures of every single class schedule was a total clutter and the Committee’s lack of the predictions of impacts and functioning status screams out “NO” to every person that was present at the meeting.

A goal of the Committee is 80 percent teaching efficiency on scheduling, but, it shouldn’t be the main priority. With block scheduling, teachers are teaching six out of eight classes making it 75 percent efficient, a term and number used to use to delude the truth which is the new schedules aren’t efficient overall, while the highest “efficiency” rate that the Committee proposes is six out of seven, making that efficiency 85 percent. And teachers each need 200 minutes of planning time for classes a week, mandated by the State, which fits into the proposals.

“My opinion is to keep block scheduling,” Bart Bates, Assistant Principal said, “And I understand the compromise of the board, but I’ll support the district’s decision.”

Students and teachers do need to cooperate with the Committee during this hard economy. But that doesn’t mean they approve of the Committee’s plans.

A lot do not favor any decision to change block scheduling.

“I disagree with change of the block scheduling and I want to keep it, or else it’d be hectic and crazy at Northtown,” said Joaquin Cuni, Spanish teacher.

Another teacher, Tessa Netherton, Algebra, said something similar.

“It’s not going to work at Northtown. There will be no time that is spent for passing, electives will be limited, less class choices, and students will be overloaded with homework every day and the teachers too with grading it,” she said.

But what about the students in the plans? Where are they in the middle of all this? Students who take IB and AP classes will be frantic and may fail to adjust to the plans. Better yet, regular students or students who fill up their blocks with weight training, physical education, or band don’t support periods or trimesters either.

From a survey of 62 students, IB and non-IB, 98 percent of them say they want to keep block scheduling. Reasons why students are against period scheduling are there will be less time for class and fewer choices of electives, and if we have fewer electives, there will be more core class time which means a crowded environment.

And trimesters do not work either. When I was in sixth grade at Northgate Middle School, we had trimesters for electives and that was a disaster. If trimesters can’t even work for electives, let alone a middle school, why in the world would trimester scheduling be applied to an IB/AP open campus high school? It is complete nonsense!

So instead of losing money and favor from the schools, the Committee should make a similar block schedule that has teachers active in seven out of eight classes, making the efficiency rate a higher 88 percent.

I realize that this violates the district’s policy when teachers would flip flop days of planning time out of the week, but advisory period should be a good time to plan too because they would have about 270 minutes of planning a week because advisory period is a waste of time as it is now.

Therefore, the district needs to change their policy to please the most people in the school district by keeping block scheduling and avoid their plan decisions in May.