“I’ll be making a recommendation that North HS and South HS go to flexible scheduling in the year 2015-16” Principal Trimberger on SHS TV. Flexible scheduling has been a big talk for some time and an anticipated change for the upcoming year. Due to the school board’s concerns that South would be transitioning to flexible scheduling before North, the scheduling will be put on hold until the 2015-16 school year. South High’s site-based management team has looked at many options to better the school academically and accommodate the students and found that flexible scheduling, also known as flex-mod, was the best fit. Flexible scheduling is an individualized learning plan that creates more access to teachers during the day for students that need assistance. The schedule truly is flexible and it allows for self-determination. The students day will be made up of 28 mods. Each class will have a certain amount of mods for that specific day. The student’s schedule will not be the same everyday of the week and they must know their own schedule so they know when to leave for their next class or have free time during the day. Students will have a variety of class sizes: mall, medium and large. The small groups would have 10-18 students in each so that the students would have extra attention and be able to have small group discussions. In the medium group there will be 30-90 students which would be the most common class size. In the large groups there would be 90-120 students, these classes would be held in the auditorium and the shell, which would be made into a lecture style setting. In the large group there would be approximately 4 teachers with one lead teacher that would be in charge of the lecture based class. Also, within the large groups students will be required to scan their students ID for attendance when they are going in and out of the lecture. Since there will be no bells with flexible scheduling, students will have to rely on knowing when to get to get to class and keep the layout of their schedule with them. Transitioning to flexible scheduling will be very drastic and confusing for some, but the school is working hard to make sure that this change will be beneficial all students. After approximately 3 years, at Merrill High School, it showed improvement in ACT scores and also in classroom work. A lot more responsibility will be put on the student but the staff thinks that students will be able to handle it. Students will need to take control of when and where they need extra help. Resource rooms will be available all day for all subjects. Unstructured time will be like free time or a study hall. For freshmen and sophomores they will be required to go to resource rooms during their unstructured time while juniors and seniors will be able to fill out a form to get a release, if they choose. For staff, they will have more work with the new schedule, but there will be more time during the day for collaboratively working. Along with having more responsibility, the students will also have to keep respect within the hallways. Since passing periods won’t be at the same time for everyone, respect to other classes will be necessary with this new change. There are a few major obstacles that are holding up both schools from moving to flexible scheduling for the 2014-15 school year. One of the biggest issues is the software company that created our attendance system is not able to work out glitches that they have while trying to create a new software that is personalized for flexible scheduling at both North and South. South High will continue their educating to the students on flexible scheduling and is looking forward to implementing it in the 2015-16 school year. Story by: Courtney Stewart