Students received new schedules on the tenth day of school which resulted in major disruption for students and teachers.
Due to errors in many schedules given out on the first day of school, the administration decided to overhaul all students’ schedules.
Senior Dalylah Gibson was changed from geometry class to algebra II-trigonometry and her teacher for her government and economics class was switched. “It represents our school as disorganized and just stressed everyone,” Gibson said. “The administration didn’t inform us that changes were happening, which led me to be confused and angry.”
Many students were reshuffled into the same class with the same teacher, but at different periods during the school day. Teachers and students had to spend extra time at the end of the week reorganizing their materials and assignments in Google Classroom and their grade records in Jumprope.
Students moved from one instructor to another most frequently in courses and grades where there were two or more different teachers. Mr. Lin and Ms. Cepeda, who have different sections of 9th grade global history, estimated that all of their rosters changed by fifty percent after the switch.
Melissa Bernard, a junior, switched between Mr. Wooh and Mr. Driver’s English classes. Bernard said, “I feel slowed down in some classes like English; I felt like I was advancing and now I’m way behind.”
Ms. Ellovich’s eleventh grade Spanish Heritage class moved from third period to first, which resulted in a new schedule conflict with students enrolled in Mr. Cyphert’s AP Environmental Science class. Her
enrollment dropped from 24 students to 15.
Spanish Heritage, an advanced Spanish literature and writing course for native Spanish speakers, has been offered at Pace for more than ten years.
Ms. Ellovich said, “It’s unfortunate now that kids who are advanced in Spanish can’t take Heritage Spanish. The fact that an AP class was prioritized over language is terrible. It will probably be more boring for those students to be in a regular Spanish language class than a regular science class.”
Similarly, the new AP Psychology class moved from 7th to 8th period, which caused a conflict in many students’ schedules. After the switch, AP African American Studies enrollment went down from 25 to 15 students, and most seniors who had requested to be in journalism class, were scheduled for the AP Psychology course. The enrollment in journalism class dropped from 19 to 11 students.
Principal Glatz explained that due to staff members leaving in August, the administration tried to maintain the class schedule without hiring replacement teachers. By September, though, there were gaps in requirements for students with Individualized Education Plans and state course requirements.
Schedule changes always happen in the first two weeks of class, he said. This year, though, “it was looking like a larger change than we’ve had in the past would be needed,” Mr. Glatz said. “And so we made a decision rather than having multiple, what would have been large changes on a daily basis, to try to just create a new schedule.”
