Upon entering the building on the first day of school, students experience mixed emotions, such as a feeling of dread that the summer is over, nervous jitters for what’s to come, and excitement to see friends. However, the last thing Francis Lewis students want to see is endless lines to the guidance office. It’s a school tradition to have some sort of issue with one’s program schedule. With the sheer number of students at Francis Lewis, creating schedules and classes to match preferences, credit requirements, and resolve issues that arise proves to be a struggle every year for teachers, counselors, administration, and especially the students.
“In the first few weeks of the starting school year, the guidance office was really crazy, there were so many people that I couldn’t even see my guidance counselor to ask for help,” Senior, Sol Lee described. “It was kind of hard because of my schedule changes, my JROTC class changed a lot and then my other classes were changing without me being notified, I even got a whole new schedule– it was very frustrating for me.”
As the new school year begins, it is natural for students to want to make changes to their schedules but the requests made are sometimes out of guidance’s control and are not always easy to achieve, leaving students quite unsatisfied. However, what students fail to realize is that the scheduling process and system are more complex than they may initially think.
“It’s important to understand that sometimes when a schedule adjustment is made to your schedule, it’s not necessarily just coming from your school counselor,” Guidance Counselor, Mr. Hugo Roberto Verastigui, said. “It could be somebody else. Of course you go to your school counselor first, but if we are unable to make the changes, it’s not because we’re an evil counselor who wants to make your life hard.”
In truth, many students are unaware that their schedules are actually created by the program department, who arrange student and teacher’s class placements, locations, and rosters, utilizing a computer software program set up with certain parameters.
“The entire schedule is actually done using a software called stars,” Program Department Chair, Mr. Marlon Anuran, along with the program assistant chair, Ms. Y. Lee explained. “It’s a very time consuming task because it involves multiple things with multiple people and staff members, including the assistant principals, guidance counselors, and the students. It’s a multi-step, multifaceted process that requires a lot of people to collaborate.”
This complexity doesn’t just start from the beginning of the school, but way prior, involving a lot of planning and organization of student data.
“Usually in the spring semester, the school asks students to complete a Google form where they will request AP classes and for current freshmen, they’ll ask them to see if they wanna continue in the academy they’re in, or if they want to change academies,” Mr Verastigue explains. “Those requests will go to the program office and then based on that they create a list of classes and share that with us through a Google sheet which we double check to make sure students take all the classes they need. The second part is over the summer when the program office builds your schedule and puts it together, then right before the beginning of the school year you’ll know exactly what time you start, what time you end, and where your teachers are.”
With that in mind, when the majority of students want to make changes to their programs it becomes a struggle for the school staff to satisfy everyone’s wants under one unified scheduling system.
“I really haven’t seen it be a problem in terms of, ‘I couldn’t find a seat in that class’ or ‘I didn’t have enough room in my schedule to take the class,’” College Counselor, Ms. Michelle Sperandio- Howland recalled. “Usually, the scheduling conflicts start to build up as a result of the students themselves wanting to make changes mostly for personal reasons such as students don’t want a first period class, they want to leave early, or they want to drop a class.”
“It’s human nature to not be satisfied with things” Mr. Anuran said. Therefore, “it is important that students accept the fact that their schedules will never be a hundred percent satisfying” Ms. Lee added. “It’s not gonna fit and be perfect everybody.”
One of the major complaints of students regards commonly having activities they want or plan on attending, but are unable to because of their late or conflicting schedules.
“I want to be in a club, but because it takes place during ninth period I can’t attend because I am still in class that period,” Sophomore Kayla Yusupov said. “It’s honestly upsetting for me since it makes things inconvenient and I want to be involved with the school as much as possible.”
Similarly, freshman Ethan Cheung said, “I have extracurricular activities that I was planning on attending. For example soccer practices with my friends, but that started at 3 and since I finish school at 4, I have not been able to participate.”
However, making complaints is inevitable as the organization of classes for the younger grades are predetermined to specific time periods making it almost impossible to be able to alter their time periods to an earlier schedule. Counselors believe that this current set up of classes makes more sense because as students get older it is more important that they have time after school for their jobs, volunteering, clubs, or sport teams (Ms. Spatafore).
“If you’re a freshman or a sophomore, most likely you can have a later schedule,” Mr. Anuran explains, “It’s just the way we put it in the master because you don’t wanna be a senior staying in school till period nine. Usually it’s the 9th and 10th graders who are scheduled towards the end. It’s just the way we designed it.”
Many students are also unaware of just how much progress has previously been made to student schedules to better accommodate the students and their preferences as much as possible, yet they are still unsatisfied with the product.
“It’s also good for students to know that 10 years ago, we were running from period 1-12,” Mr. Anuran said. “It used to be the case that people were getting home at 5:30 PM before completing all their classes. So, I believe the schedules have improved over the years.”
Besides having late class schedules, many students also experience random changes to their schedules, due to the system of equalization. Equalization is extremely important because it helps to divide up classes uniformly and make sure everyone can attend the necessary classes without going against specific parameters.
“The thing about equalization is that by law, in terms of the ratio among the student population, academic classes cannot exceed 34 students,” Mr. Anuran explained. “A common scenario is that there is a specific class we are trying to put the student in, but it’s already full. On the other hand, there is a student in that specific class that can be transferred to a different period of the same subject, where the student originally had lunch, making it an easy swap. We’re not targeting that student, it’s just that the student’s schedule fits perfectly with the changes needed with minimum interruption and involves the least number of students.”
It is common for students to feel targeted, as described by the program department staff, but creating schedules is a whole puzzle and sometimes you just need to break apart a few pieces before putting them back together.
“I think it’s good for the students to know about the process and the amount of data that we are dealing with and the equalization process,” Ms. Lee voiced. “And if they can understand where we are coming from, I think that would be less complaints.”
One possible reason this entire process is made so difficult for both students and counselors is because of the sheer capacity of students attending Francis Lewis this year, reaching nearly a total of 4,500+ students.
“The line of students waiting went almost all the way to the strip from the guidance office which blocked a bunch of classroom doors,” Yusupov recalled. “It made it really inconvenient for students trying to get to class as well as for the students who spent almost 2 hours waiting for their guidance counselors. I could also tell that the guidance counselors were really stressed out about it and overwhelmed by the demands for schedule changes.”
As a result, a week or so into the school year, the guidance counselors decided to utilize the auditorium as a “waiting room” for students to stay in to minimize the crowd in the hallways. Counselors like Mr. Verastigui believed this solution to be effective, however, some students disagree.
“I have mixed opinions about the auditorium method because for the school and the counselors, I’m pretty sure it made things easier for them,” Yusupov explained. “But for the kids on the other hand, they had to spend at least 45 minutes waiting during their lunch period. For me, I went during my free period and I had to wait there for over an hour, so I ended up also needing a late slip from my guidance counselor. Overall, it was just really confusing and took way too long.”
Thus, students may turn to more virtual methods of communication like emails to contact counselors instead. Nonetheless, counselors still believe that waiting in line is still the optimal solution for students to voice their concerns up front, despite the difficulties.
“I try to make myself available to students that have a question about their schedule,” Mr. Verastigui said. “I tell students that my priority is whoever is here at my office. The phone could be ringing and emails could be coming in, but when I’m talking to students, that’s my priority.”
The changes in schedules made by student requests also impact teachers’ ability to get the school year started. The constant going in and out for students causes disruption and difficulties for many teachers to get all of their students on the same page.
“Juniors and seniors tend to have classes earlier in the day but if there is no availability, students are put into my 8th or 9th period classes creating these big gaps in their schedules causing them to drop the class,” AP Psychology teacher, Ms. Jennifer Miller described. “Then for people who in the end decide to stay till later in the day to take my class, come back a week or two into the school year and I think it’s unfair to any student because now they’ve got a deskmate who knows absolutely nothing and missed a lot of class content. It messes up the organization of the classroom as I like to have students in certain seats, but with a new student, I’ve gotta figure out their personality and how they will work with the students that I have already gotten to know.”
Teachers also face difficulties managing their workload as they “can only teach so many periods in a row” (Ms. Spatafore). They must deal with an early or late class schedule and unlike students they are unable to request changes based on their personal preference.
“I know there’s some teachers, because they teach the freshmans and sophomores, their classes tend to be later in the day and so they might have problems finding childcare after or even before school, getting home later and facing more traffic,” Miller, comments. “It’s a big problem for a lot of teachers and kind of a hassle.”
As a result of yearly issues, the program office, counselors and the administration look for areas of improvement as well as success to help maximize the efficiency and benefit the students in the next school year.
“We always make a note of what worked in the opening year, what didn’t work, and what needs to be changed,” Mr Anuran said. “It’s constant introspection since you have to know the best practices to continue doing them and if there’s anything that can be changed and improved for the next time around, we also try to figure out what those things are. We’re trying to maximize the engine’s efficiency so that we can minimize manual improvements.”
It should be credited that students are, for the most part, understanding, but it is also crucial to acknowledge that a student’s schedule heavily influences their success in school, mental health, and social life.
“Every person in this school is different with their own routine, own sleep schedule, and their own activities,” Lee explained. “School is a requirement, and for seniors and juniors, who are working on college applications, it is a lot of pressure. If their school schedule is not helping and makes them feel more stressed, it would definitely help students’ mental health if they were more accommodated.”
Overall, both students and teachers have to be more understanding and considerate when looking at the bigger picture when it comes to schedule changes.
“I think communication is key for everyone in the building to understand what’s going on, the reason for changes and the process,” Mr. Verastigui commented. “I think that’s something that’s important for us adults and for our staff to be more understanding and empathetic about, especially towards incoming students, and vice versa.”
