At the beginning of the school year, every student in the district receives their schedule outlining the classes they will attend for the rest of the year. For students, their day-to-day life at school is based entirely off this one schedule, making them especially sensitive to any errors on their schedules.
“I emailed before the previous school year ended about my schedule changes, So, it was frustrating at first that my classes weren’t changed when I got my schedule,” said senior Molly Dennis.
When errors persist on schedules, students experience a wide array of emotions from confused to frustrated, particularly when it comes after they assumed the mistakes had been fixed.
“Last year I signed up for all my classes, all of the required stuff. I put it in, it all looked fine. Then I noticed I go to my class registration on PowerSchool and I noticed my French II wasn’t on there. Instead, it was a digital design class.” said freshman Lily Leuthold.
Leuthold detailed how she had never signed up for the class, and went on to contact her counselor assuming the error would be corrected. However, at the end of summer, when her schedule arrived, the mistake remained.
“I get my schedule, and they have taken off two required classes, computer foundations and PCC to put on principles of digital design. I did not want that. I was very perplexed when that happened because why would you remove two required classes?” said Leuthold.
Mistakes like the one Leuthold experienced can be exasperating but are inevitable given the size of FC. Counselors at FC face a workload of 350 to 370 students each, a number considerably larger than the recommended amount. According to the American Consular Association, the proper ratio for student to counselors is 250 to 1. This year, counselors take on a larger work load with a change to how the students each counselor are assigned.
“Previously we had one designated counselor that did all 504s and IEPs along with Mrs. Mayfield, who is a student support facilitator. But once she left and we hired new people, we all shifted. Now, we are all 9 through 12, just to certain names, and that includes 504s and IEPs,” said counselor Chelsey Davis.
Counselors must also account for more than just student schedule requests, making sure students meet graduation requirements while working with the school’s master schedule.
“We have to follow the master’s schedule where we see that this teacher can offer AP Chem first period only. And then we’re looking if students are having multiple AP classes and if they’re going for something like the ICC or academic honors, they cannot register for everything they want because we have to follow what’s available.” said counselor Carmela Missi.
Teachers must also be taken into account when it comes to scheduling, with a focus being on keeping classes at manageable levels, while also trying to make sure students can take the needed courses.
“We do the best we can, but if a class is too full, then we can’t squeeze them in.
And our teachers are very kind and supportive of us and what we ask of them, but it’s not fair to put another student in a class of 32 when you’ve got a teacher that has 15.” said counselor Jessica Simler.
Even with the counselor’s due diligence, changes within the district can still cause miscalculations with schedules adding another layer of complication to the process. At the start of the year, a change to the district attendance policies came back to cause blunders on schedules.
“I had two different English teachers for a while on my schedule, one for first semester and then a different for second semester,” said Dennis.
The root of the change came with the new attendance policies needing classes to be broken up by the semester instead of the year.
“There were some little snafus, where you would have one teacher in the first semester and a different teacher second semester, so we had to clean some of that up. It was a little bit of a challenge, but not a major issue.” said Simler.
When it comes to a schedule, even small changes can cause complications, and bigger changes like classes added post-deadline or students not meeting graduation requirements can mean counselors have to scramble to keep everything running smoothly.
“It’s a mad rush sometimes and it’s really important for students to know what they want to do, what the requirements are, so that we can get it as best we can, but there’s always going to be those few where some things change and it’s just beyond our control.” said counselor Mark Clark.
For counselors, schedules are a balancing game as they try to meet district requirements and appease students to the best of their ability. The work put into schedules can be easily overlooked; it still is what defines students’ everyday experience.