At the start of next school year, the Forest Lake Area High School will transition from a seven-period semi-block schedule to an equal seven-period day in an effort to accommodate a smaller full-time staff, as well as improve student academic achievement in classes and standardized testing.
Under the current schedule, there are five class periods in a day, with the first three classes being 51 minutes long, and two class periods lasting 90 minutes, like a “block” schedule, which Forest Lake Area High School Principal Jim Caldwell said has “frankly, served us super, super well for many, many years.”
That model could have continued to serve the district, but due to downsizing of the district and a downturn in MCA student achievement, a change seemed necessary.
“All of our schools, just like a business, need to be constantly looking at, how can we improve? If we’re not continually looking at that and making those tough decisions, … we aren’t going to improve,” Caldwell said.
The shift, slated for the start of the 2024-2025 school year, would result in students taking the same amount of courses in one year, but it would standardize all class times and remove the 90-minute blocks.
“We have more flexibility in a straight seven than we do on our current schedule,” Caldwell said, adding some courses can still be on the block schedule “as we deem necessary.”
The shift in scheduling also comes with an earlier start time for students. Next year, school days will start at 7:45 a.m., 10 minutes earlier than the daily schedule now, with 2:30 p.m. still being the end of the day. Despite the earlier start time, bus pick-up times won’t change.
But figuring out a pattern for lunches for the students has been challenging, as one block of students, at this point, are scheduled to take a lunch in the middle of a single class; they will spend the first half of the period in class, and return to that same class when their lunch is over.
“We’ll have to watch what classes we put on the split. There’s certain classes you’re not going to split. You’re not going to split a phy. ed. class, you’re not going to split a lab class,” Caldwell said.
He added that maybe splitting a class like social studies, that is lecture-heavy, could be an option, but it’ll be something to keep an eye on as they transition.
Science classes that require longer lab periods or shop classes can be turned into double periods if needed, but removing the standard block schedule may simply improve student learning each semester.
“Blocks require more work per day. If you think about it, on a block, you’re going through twice the amount of stuff in a day. … Semester allows more time to get through the material,” Caldwell said.
School board member Jill Christenson wondered how teachers responded to hearing this change due to it increasing their workload on day one of each semester. For example, instead of teaching three or four classes in one school day, teachers will teach five or six in a day.
“That’s increased workload for the short term; over the long term, it’s exactly the same,” Caldwell said.
Overall, teachers will instruct the same amount of students over the course of one year, but they’ll be working with more students per day than before.
Caldwell said this could result in the need for creative solutions for some classes like studio art. With more students taking a class per semester, there may need to be increased storage in art rooms to store that amount of work.
“I’ve challenged our departments … to start thinking outside the box,” Caldwell said.
The hope is the schedule change will help improve standardized test scores, since students will be in math or science classes throughout the school year, not a quarter before MCAs are taken.
School board member Curt Rebelein Jr. heard from a student that taking the math portion of the MCA was a challenge, since they had finished that class months prior to taking the exam. The shift in class schedule would ensure students are learning core academics throughout a semester instead of a quarter.
“Just changing a schedule is not a magic bullet. It is not going to change our test scores. We have to be systematic, we have to create guaranteed, viable curriculum within our core areas,” Caldwell said.
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