High School Schedule Recommendation

The district scheduling committee, which was comprised of administrators, teachers from each high school, and 11th and 12th grade students, has recommended a rotating drop two schedule. The proposed schedule is the result of 7 years of meetings, surveys, and work done by WCASD. However, much of this work was interrupted by the COVID pandemic. 

The schedule would allow for longer periods each day (53 minutes vs. the 42 minutes that are currently in place).
Students would be able to schedule 8 credits at a time vs. the current 7 and still have a scheduled lunch (15% of current students do not have a scheduled lunch).

In the schedule, students have six periods a day and an hour long Lunch and Learn period. The schedule rotates so that students do not have the same class at the same time each day. The schedule is called a drop 2 because each day students drop 2 of their scheduled periods so that remaining six periods can be a longer time.

A sample student schedule is below:

The info-graphic below, which shows responses by 10th and 12th grade WCASD students on the 2023 Pennsylvania Youth Survey, provides some rationale for the main reasons to modify the high school schedule. 

While students perceived that their own efforts in class were positive and that a large majority of them often or almost always tried to do their best work, the majority of students felt that the work they were doing was only fairly interesting or worse and that the work was only sometimes, seldom, or never meaningful and important. Because of these results, which match other results from national surveys about how high school students are currently experiencing their school experience, the district believes that the high school experience should change to improve student engagement and outcomes. 

To change the student experience, primarily will require that we change instructional practices. The district will be working with the Schlechty Center for Student Engagement and other professional development providers over the next 17 months as part of this process. 
Moving to longer time blocks was a key reason for making a change in the schedule because of these factors. A block schedule was also evaluated as a possible new schedule, but after meeting with students, it was clear that there were significant concerns about moving to class time blocks of that length. This concern was shared by more than half of the faculty members involved in reviewing the schedules as well.  

In addition, improving student connection was a key component of the new schedule. To improve the schedule structure so that connections are easier for students, the proposed schedule also utilizes a one hour Lunch and Learn which ensures that every student has the ability to have lunch with their friends, which is something that is much more difficult in the current schedule. 

Lunch and Learn was also increased to a full hour to ensure that students have time for intervention from teachers. One of the key components of the new proposed schedule is that the time students have to receive support doubles. In addition, planned changes to the Lunch and Learn blocks will ensure that students have access to almost every teacher on their schedule every day during the Lunch and Learn block. 

The proposed schedule is similar to the schedule run at Lower Merion and Harriton High schools in the Lower Merion School District. The WCASD scheduling committee, including teachers, visited Lower Merion High School as part of this process. 

WCASD has spent significant time attempting to move back school start times for students. However, it has proven to be very difficult and expensive to attempt to make these changes. By moving to a rotating schedule, students will not have the same class early in the morning each day (something that students, teachers, and parents have stated is a challenge).

In addition, student athletes often miss classes at the end of the day due to having to leave early for sports. Now, with this change, students will be less likely to miss the same class on a regular basis, if they need to be dismissed early. 

During the remainder of the 2024-25 school year, and the entire 2025-26 school year, staff will be working on pacing guides as well as receiving training on teaching in a longer period. Training will focus on increasing the amount of project based learning that occurs, maximizing instructional time, and ensuring that content is relevant to students. 

The answer to this question really depends on what you believe is “instructional time.”  The chart below explains the nuances of time in the new schedule:

Current (2024-25) Schedule

Proposed (2026 -) Schedule

The District is committed to ensuring that no programs that are currently available for students become unavailable due to the schedule change. However, some programs may need to be changed or expanded to make them work with the rotating schedule. 

Our current plan for a course like Ed Practicum would be to make the courses 4 credits. This would allow the course to be a full ½ day program and would allow our students to spend more time in elementary classrooms and would allow us to also apply for additional accreditation and certificates for students who complete the program.

An alternate plan for a course like Ed Practicum would be to make the Ed Practicum 3 credits. A sample schedule could look like the one below:

In this schedule, students would have two days every four that they would be in elementary classes and two days where they would be taking coursework at their high school. 

Final recommendations for courses like Ed Practicum and Allied Health will be made by the end of the 2024-25 school year to ensure that rising juniors who would like to take these courses as seniors can make the necessary course adjustments needed during their Junior year (2025-26).

The district will have all available staff members (administrators, para-educators, security personnel, substitute teachers, etc.) available to supervise spaces during the Lunch and Learn block. In addition, teachers will be available to work with students in their classrooms for ½ of the block each day (except for days designated for teacher collaboration (1 out of every 8 days).

Creating spaces where students can be together throughout the building is also work that will be occurring over the next 17 months.

Yes. There are no other lunch periods during the day, so all students will need to eat during the hour-long Lunch and Learn block. However, students can eat whenever they choose to do so within that time.

There will be days when they may want to meet with a teacher who is eating during the first 30-minute block, so they may choose to eat at some point during the first 30-minutes so that they can meet with the teacher during the teacher’s scheduled “learn” block. In addition, there may be times when staff request that students come to meet with them during a specific learn block, so staff availability would impact when student’s can eat during the 1-hour Lunch and Learn time..

Yes. Club meetings will still be able to be held during the Lunch and Learn block. 

Blocks of consistent late arrival and early dismissal will likely be reserved for seniors and would be for ½ the day. This will better allow students to complete internships, work study and off campus courses. 

However, if students have a study hall, that study hall would rotate and would allow for all students to either have late arrival (morning study hall)  or early dismissal (afternoon study hall) once every four days. The goal is to schedule most students into 8 credits, but the district realizes there will still be students who want to have a study hall during the day. Over the next year and a half, the district plans to articulate pathways for students that would support this type of late arrival/early dismissal.