Dear Parents,                                                                                                              09/07/2006

I know you all have been confused about your child’s schedule and now that we seem to have it all worked out we can fill you in.

At the end of last year it was decided that we would go ahead and move to block scheduling a year in advance of when the public schools plan to do it.  Block scheduling, with its longer periods every other day give classes the ability to spend more time working on a single subject.  This means more labs in science, more time for projects and special assignments in other classes and more focus for the students who do not have to shift their thinking nearly as many times each day.  So you will hear about “A days” and “B days” from your child.  Some of their classes will be held only every other day, on “A days” for instance, but the total amount of time spent in those classes is at least as much as it was under the old system, sometimes even more. We know this is new and therefore somewhat confusing, but the expectation is that students will find that the new schedule makes for a better learning environment.

Although we had a schedule all worked out back in June, we were thrown a monkey wrench when North High could not schedule the 8th graders Spanish class at the end of the day where it had usually been.  This resulted in massive amounts of shifting around, but with a few false starts we seem to have it settled.

For the parents of 8th graders: Spanish is an elective and it now replaces music and art in your child’s schedule.  Also affected is English, which they will now have three days a week for 40 minutes each.  This is 80 minutes less than previously but is still within the requirements of the state and somewhat parallels what the public schools are moving to. Spanish was only offered to us at 9:25 am so your child will not be able to attend Chapel with the rest of the school.  This loss disturbs us greatly and we are looking for a solution that will work for all of our students.

Hopefully this will clear up any confusion you might have had.

Thank you, and Blessings, Mrs. Pontynen