By Alyssa Schnugg
News editor
The School Board met Monday and heard an update from Assistant Superintendent Patrick Robinson on the district’s research into whether block scheduling would be a good option for the school district.
Robinson said he and several other teachers and administrators recently visited other high and middle schools in Mississippi that use block scheduling to see how it works and ask questions.
“We’ve seen a lot of different varieties (of block scheduling) and we’re going to have to go through and pick what works best for our students,” he said.
A traditional block schedule is set up so that a student attends the same four classes every day for 90 days. For the second semester (remaining 90 days), the student attends a different set of four classes every day.
If a student plays a sport, that will become one of the four class periods as an athletic period.
“We want to make sure every decision we make about block scheduling is a student-centered decision,” he said Monday. “We want to make sure we can address as many concerns as possible.”
The district is also considering a modified block schedule for the middle school, where students would take up to eight courses each semester but would attend classes on alternating days. School days would be divided into A and B days and students would attend four classes on the A-day and the other classes on the B-day.
Roberson said the reason for possibly moving to a modified block schedule for the middle school was to create a transition from K-12 to the four-by-four schedule in the high school.
“Elementary departmentalized program where they have three teachers, then come to the middle school you have seven periods then go to the high school where there will the four-by-four schedule,” he said. “We also have to share teachers between the middle and high school so we need to run a similar bell schedule and a modified block would allow us to do that.”
Roberson said school counselors would assist students to make sure they are scheduling the courses they need and to make sure there aren’t large gaps between certain subjects.
The district will begin having parent meetings around February and more information will eventually be provided on the district’s website.
The Board took no action in regard to the block scheduling on Monday.
Parents are invited to submit questions about block scheduling via email to blockschedulequestions@gocommodores.org.
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