High school to modify class schedule
By Kevin Kelley
Westlake
Published July 1, 2009

When students return to Westlake High School this fall, they’ll have a different schedule two days a week.

Principal Tim Freeman said what he is calling “hybrid block scheduling” will allow teachers to have more flexibility.

Under block scheduling, which grew in popularity among educators in the 1990s, students have fewer classes each day for a longer period of time. Under one form of block scheduling, a student may have four classes each day that meet for 90 minutes.

The reasoning is that such a schedule allows more time for teaching due to less class switching and preparation.

Critics of block scheduling say the longer classes are not conducive to the attention spans of adolescents, and that students will forget what they learned if they don’t attend class in a given subject every day or every semester.

When students first heard a change in class scheduling was in the works, there was strong opposition, Freeman acknowledged.

On the social networking Web site Facebook, Westlake High School students created a group entitled “WHS Students Against Block Scheduling” to protest any change. More than 360 people, including alumni and students beyond Westlake, joined the group.

On a group message board, students debated the possibility of longer classes under a new scheduling system.

“Seriously, I don’t think I can sit in a classroom for more than an hour, especially if it’s a teacher I don’t like,” one student wrote.

Others said students should not be so negative until they at least tried the new system.

Freeman said such concerns are not warranted anyway because the high school is not implementing a true block schedule.

“I’m not a fan of block scheduling,” Freeman said.

This fall, Freeman said, students will meet for a traditional eight-period day (plus lunch) on Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays.

On Wednesdays and Thursdays, students will attend four classes of 92 minutes each, plus lunch.

As a result, each class will meet only four days each week. For example, a math class would meet for about 42 minutes Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays and 92 minutes on Wednesday.

After the actual plans were explained, Freeman said, students’ concerns evaporated.

Indeed, all the messages posted on the Facebook group date from before Christmas.

However, Paula Krajnik, a junior who created the Facebook group, told West Life that student opposition to the new schedule dissipated because students became convinced there was nothing they could do to stop it.

Krajnik said the existing schedule was fine and questioned how many teachers favor the change.

“Teachers won't want to teach for 90 minutes,” Krajnik said. “I would wager that at least 50 percent will teach for 45 minutes and then allow students to use the remaining time to work on homework, which is not wholly bad, but not wholly good either.”

Freeman said that many were concerned  that block scheduling would be harmful to Westlake High’s strong arts and music programs. However, those concerns were unwarranted, the principal said.

The hybrid block scheduling successfully handles the existing problem of longer chunks of time needed for science labs, Freeman said. Plus, the system frees up an extra period for electives, he added.

A core group of 14 faculty members developed the plan over the last year or so, Freeman said. The group later learned that Hudson High School was already employing a similar type of scheduling, he said.

“We had created from scratch what they were already doing,” Freeman said.

Several Westlake teachers visited Hudson this past school year to observe how their system works.

Freeman acknowledged that there may be some kinks to work out once his school implements the new schedule. Teachers will have to change their style of teaching on days of the longer classes, he said.

And to avoid early confusion, the traditional eight-period day will be observed during the first two weeks of the school year.

Freeman said the hybrid block scheduling is not related to the overcrowding now experienced at Westlake High School and throughout the district. This overcrowding has the district currently considering a plan to build four or five new school buildings.

Senior privileges, which allow seniors to leave campus for lunch and study periods, will still be in effect this fall, Freeman said. That policy became a hot topic during the 2007-08 school year when a handful of Westlake High School students were implicated in drug related cases, Freeman said.

One aspect of the new schedule students may take issue with — less time for lunch. Students will get 30 minutes for lunch instead of 42 minutes beginning this fall.

“We’re going to maximize the amount of time that we put students and teachers together,” Freeman explained.

So far, Freeman said, he hasn’t received any complaints from students about the reduced lunch time.