Remember when high school meant changing classes for seven periods a day – ha, weren’t we quaint? Last month, West Chester Area School District administrators presented their High School Schedule recommendation to the School Board’s Teaching, Learning, and Equity Committee.
“The Scheduling Committee is recommending what we call the Drop 2 schedule with a rotation. Sounds complex,” WCASD Director of Teaching, Learning and Equity Stephen Brown admitted to the committee.
Yes, like something Simone Biles might attempt.
The presentation marks the culmination of a project that dates back to the 2017-2018 school year. Administrators are hoping for big things from the rotation like enhanced student learning and increased flexibility for students and faculty but as Dr. Brown said, it’s complex.
The proposed schedule has many moving parts and delves into a lexicon that administrators may be comfortable conversing in but had me glazing over minutes into the presentation. Below, I break down the presented pros and cons as well as some parental concerns.
Pros (as presented by the District):
- Improved lunch and learn
- Longer instructional periods – from 42 to 53 minutes
- Less monotony during the week – schedule changes daily on a four-day cycle.
- Increased flexibility for the students to schedule classes. Committee members need to work out details, but they saw areas of potential improvement for specialized students or those taking special ed classes. “This new schedule opens up a lot of opportunities for a lot of different kids,” Dr. Brown said. Conversely, this was one of the areas of greatest concern for parents.
- Less chance a student will miss the same class repeatedly. Particularly in the case of student-athletes who sometimes need to leave school early to get to games or meets.
- Teachers will have a set planning and/or professional development time every day
Cons and, what the district is calling, “Boulders,” or areas that still need to be worked out:
- How to feed all students at once (under the proposed Lunch and Learn plan all students will have the same lunch period)
- The complex schedule could take some students a while to master
- How to accommodate specialized student schedules, i.e. those attending technical and trade programs at TCHS, student teaching, or participating in other outside programs.
- Traveling teachers – WCASD still needs to figure out how to minimize travel disruptions
- How to address AP classes and science labs which routinely run longer than a 42 or 53-minute class period
Additional concerns raised by parents:
- An overall loss of classroom time – an equivalent of two weeks a year for every class. WCASD has acknowledged the changes will result in a loss of classroom time but they are planning to work with teachers to change to pacing to make sure nothing gets missed.
- How to account for students during the extended lunch and learn period. “I see the benefits of lunch and learn, but there are major issues with attendance and location tracking during the existing period,” says mom of four Nancy Wood, who currently has a sophomore in the district. “It’s pretty shocking that they are adding a second lunch and learn without first resolving these issues.”
Glossary of Key Terms
Drop 2 schedule – In a “Drop 2” schedule, students take eight classes, but only six meet a day. The remaining two classes are ‘dropped.’ This creates a four-day rotating cycle. In the proposed WCASD version, the first and last classes of the day are dropped. The benefits of the proposed schedule included longer instructional time and a change in the class students have first or last. Students miss these two periods with greater regularity than in other classes. “How can we create a schedule that’s engaging to students and really challenges those patterns and disrupts those patterns?” Dr. Conley asked the committee.
Lunch and Learn – This is a one-hour block during the middle of the day that students can use to eat, meet with teachers, work on class projects, attend a club meeting, shoot hoops in the gym, etc. Schools will assign students a 30-minute block for “lunch” and a 30-minute open period to “learn,” but in practice, they can use the time as they wish. Lunch first, club meeting later. Teacher meeting at 10:22 a.m., head to lunch after.
Unionville pioneered the Lunch and Learn period six years ago under the leadership of then-principal Dr. Conley. Today, Downingtown and Avon Grove also use it. Students like the idea of knowing a teacher has free time just like them. “Every day, I know there is free time my teacher has that I also have. Right now, I am getting a paper edited by my teacher, but I also have time to eat lunch,” reported one student.
At the same time, having all students eat lunch during the same one-hour period will require some logistical changes. “It works,” Dr. Brown told committee members. “Just not the way we have traditionally experienced it.” The scheduling committee has been visiting schools using the Lunch and Learn method and exploring creative ways to add seating.
Block schedule – A block schedule is a class schedule with fewer classes per day, but each for a significantly longer duration. Under the block schedule shown as an alternative to the recommended Drop 2 schedule, students would have four, 80-minute class periods per day. Benefits of block schedules are cited as allowing more time for class collaboration, discussion, and project-based learning activities. There are also fewer transitions, a closer proximation to college scheduling, and more planning time for teachers. Negatives include a greater loss if a student is absent and a faster-paced curriculum because classes meet only every other day.
School start times – This is when class instruction begins. Classes for West Chester High Schools currently begin at 7:30 a.m.. Despite extensive discussion (and multiple studies), start times will not change under this plan. “We have looked at it extensively. It really is prohibitive. It’s really hard for us to do with our size,” said WCASD Superintendent Dr. David Christopher. Instead, the committee hopes the rotating schedule will at least give students a break from having the same first- and last-period class.
Instructional time – the time students spend learning and being assessed by teachers. Under the current proposal, instructional time will increase from 42 minutes to 53 or 56 minutes for the first and last periods. The alternate schedule increases instructional time to 80-minute periods but reduces class attendance to every other day.
X-Day cycle – This is the number of days it takes to complete each class in a student’s schedule at least once. The recommended Drop 2 schedule uses a four-day cycle. The alternate A/B block schedule has a two-day cycle.
Concluding thoughts
“There are a lot of problems with the recommended new schedule,” says Nancy, who has raised her concerns with fellow parents as well as with the District. “But if I had to summarize the overall issue, it’s that WCASD is approaching it backward. A schedule should be designed to support curriculum and programming, not the other way around.”
She believes it would be much easier for the district to modify the current schedule to meet the stated goals. “I’m worried the next three years will be spent working and reworking an entirely new schedule that isn’t supported by evidence and isn’t a good match for WCASD’s programming,” she says.
This is just one parent’s view but concerns were raised by many online and directly to the district. The significant number of TBD areas have left many unsettled about the new proposed direction. That said, the District has 18 months to fill in those blanks. The new schedule won’t go into effect until the 2026-2027 school year.
Originally published on Mar. 21, 2025
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