Criteria for Developing the Schedule

Our schedule will:

1. Reflect our mission and belief statements.
2. Give all students access to all classes, avoiding conflicting schedules of specialized classes and preventing any exclusion related to cultural background, physical abilities, socio-economic status and intellectual status.
3. Provide students with the learning time they need, including technology access to complete writing assignments and other learning activities.
4. Facilitate appropriate decisions to give particular students expanded time and support for successful performance (such as independent study, additional time to work on a project or assignment, or other appropriate methods for the situation).
5. Support our Curriculum Policy, our Instructional Practices Policy, our equity and diversity commitments, and the Goals and Strategies in our School Improvement Plan.
6. Allow teachers shared time to collaborate and plan on a regular basis (including collaboration among teachers in program review areas and other teaching areas).

 

7. Facilitate teacher opportunities to adjust the length of class periods when needed to provide the best instruction.
8. Promote reasonable and appropriate enrollments for all classes and appropriate numbers of pupils each teacher works with in the course of a day.
9. Respect the beginning and ending times of the school day and school calendar year as established by the Board of Education.

Arts and Humanities
Our schedule will:

1. Provide (when possible) all students access to all four arts disciplines— dance, drama, music, and visual arts.
2. Provide and protect adequate time for students to be actively involved in creating, performing, and responding to the arts.

Practical Living and Career Studies:

Our schedule will:

Provide and protect adequate time for all students to access to the practical living/career studies areas —health education, physical education, consumerism, and career studies.

Process for Developing the Schedule

Annually, the principal will implement a school day schedule that includes any changes that have been adopted by the council.

The school day schedule will be reviewed each year using the following procedures:

• Prior to April 30^th, the School Culture and Resources Committee will complete the following tasks:
• Survey staff and review student performance data and the survey data (if available) from students and parents on how well instructional time is being used. 
• Brainstorm current time barriers to implementing needed practices and meeting student needs and ways the schedule might be changed to remove those barriers.
• Discuss as a committee the advantages and disadvantages of various changes, focusing on the criteria listed in the first section of this policy.

1. Prior to April 30^th, committees will notify the group charged with scheduling if recommendations they have made or are considering would have schedule implications.
2. Based on the above work the committee will consult with the principal and make recommendations concerning schedule changes for the coming school year. Culture Committee will present a list of recommendations for school day schedule based on the staff survey.
3. The principal (and/or designees) will prepare a schedule for the coming school year including changes (if any).

Policy Evaluation

We will evaluate the effectiveness of this policy through our School Improvement Planning Process.

Date Adopted:  _2-27-13____

Date Reviewed or Revised:  _____         Council Chairperson’s Initials _____