An Insight into the Multiple Schedule Changes
Nina Flusberg
Since AJA returned to school about four months ago, the High School has undergone three different schedule changes. In this time of uncharted territory, the school is testing different methods and systems to see what works best, although these multiple changes in such a short time period have been difficult for some students to adjust to.
At the beginning of August — when the administration decided to start the High School in remote learning — students received a schedule that encompassed both their immediate remote and future adaptive schedules. At the time, no one knew when the High School would allow an in-person option, so the administration designed a remote schedule that it intended to replace with a different adaptive schedule in the future, according to High School Team Leader Ms. Franeen Sarif.
Once the High School switched to its adaptive model, which allowed for in-person instruction, the administration made several tweaks to the schedule. Some changes, such as different start and end times, were made simply because of logistics concerning a return to the building versus working at home. Others, such as advisory groups meeting once a week instead of twice, were made after reviewing and rethinking ways for students to maximize their productivity at school. Ms. Sarif explained, “Once we were face to face, we wanted to make sure we maximize the amount of time that teachers could work with students.”
The administration made a more significant change less than a month after in-person school began. After assessing multiple issues that came up particularly this year, it identified challenges with carpool. For families who had to pick up multiple children in different carpool zones corresponding to different segments of the school, the 25 minutes that the High School ended later than the rest of the school made carpool a very time-consuming task. This meant that some parents waited over an hour from the time they left their houses to the time they picked up their last child.
In order for the High School to end at the same time as the rest of the school, the administration shortened the time between classes and the lunch period. “This does seem to be helping the carpool wait lines,” said High School General Studies Instructional Team Leader Mr. Joel Rojek. The administrators also hoped that students getting home earlier would give them more time to work on their asynchronous assignments and cut down their amount of work outside of class.
However, while aligning the closing times appealed to parents in the carpool line and their children, it created an entirely new problem for other students: student drivers. Mr. Rojek addressed this situation, explaining, “Where this is complicated is that you’ve got a lot of different groups — a lot of different people who are affected by a change like that.”
When the High School ended after the lower school, the carpool line was mostly gone by the older students’ dismissal time. Student drivers entered their cars easily and pulled out of their parking spots. But when the entire school’s end-times coincided, the carpool line clogged up, and these student drivers had trouble getting out of their parking spots. To prevent students from attempting to squeeze out of their parking spots, the school then required student drivers to remain at school at their ‘designated areas’ until 3:45.
“Something we take really seriously is student safety,” Mr. Rojek said. “When we’re talking about student drivers and not letting them try and back out into the carpool line it’s because all of our drivers are young drivers with a limited amount of driving experience.” As for students who also drive home siblings from the lower school, they must wait for the entire carpool line to finish coming into the school before entering it themselves.
Junior student driver Dalya Silverman expressed, “It’s really stressful, especially for teenage drivers because we are so new to driving.” She compared her carpool experience to “a New York City type of environment” and called it “really hectic.”
“I was really excited to get out of school earlier so that I would have a little more time to get started on homework,” said junior Ella Goldstein. “But, now that we typically can’t pull out of our parking spots until about 3:50, it really doesn’t make a difference in terms of getting out of school earlier.” For these students, their carpool experience hasn’t been improved by these adjustments; rather it’s been made more difficult.
Mrs. Catherine Brand, a science teacher, observed that students “feel like even though [they] are physically leaving classes earlier than before, they aren’t physically leaving school earlier.” Mrs. Brand addressed that the schedule changes did not drastically change her classes much as the start and end times are still the same. If anything, she said, it even gave her some benefits teaching-wise. “The nice thing about student drivers [not being able] to leave is sometimes I’ve got a couple of extra minutes to wrap up a lab” — in upperclassmen classes where most of the students drive themselves.
While the schedule changes solved certain issues, they also caused new challenges. “There are a lot of things that are unique to this particular school year,” Mr. Rojek reflected. Due to the constant changes because of COVID, the school has also had to make several large adjustments. The most recent schedule change has been one of them, and Mr. Rojek mentioned that the administration was testing it out for two weeks before revisiting and reevaluating the outcomes.
The unique circumstances caused by the COVID-19 pandemic are bound to cause stress and create problems that require careful consideration to solve. The administration has found that they are trying to play a game of whack-a-mole, where they head off one issue only to be confronted by others that pop up as a result. Their task is to find an equilibrium that benefits as many people as possible.
Editor’s Note: UPDATE: Starting Monday, November 30, students gained the option to park in parking spots farther from the school building and closer to the Zone B gate. Carpool clears those spots much sooner, so students could leave closer to 3:30 dismissal. Students with siblings in younger grades received new parking spots in the front of the school to better facilitate their leaving on time, as well.
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