The master schedule — all the classes at RBHS, their period and students assigned — greatly influences students’ individual schedules, which are released in August.
School counselors begin working on the master schedule at the end of January when students submit their requests for the next school year. They have many factors to take into consideration; seniority, prioritizing core curriculum classes over electives and the number of students interested in a course, and most especially the availability of teachers. Multiple classes were not created for the 2023-2024 school year due to a lack of interest and instructors. Students interested in these classes must wait until the end of the summer to see if they made it on the master schedule.
Courses not created this school year included Classical Ideas and World Religions, Advanced Placement (AP) Government, AP Economics, Classical Roots, Astronomy Honors, Physics 2, Teen and Social Issues, Family Studies and Fashion and Fabric and Construction 2. With the exception of Teen and Social Issues and Family Studies, these classes were offered on the 2024-2025 course registration guide. Head of Counseling Rachel Reed said the range of courses offered makes it challenging to place students in the classes they want.
“The number of requests gets spread out across the variety of electives, so some of them don’t make it — we don’t have enough requests to offer them,” Reed said. “Or, we are only able to offer one section. If there is only one section of a class, it makes it more likely that there will be a conflict with something else in the schedule.”
Classical Ideas and World Religions and AP Literature teacher Gregory Irwin said scheduling also gets complicated when taking into account teachers’ required Professional Learning Time (PLT), known to students as their planning period. Even if enough students request a course, it’s difficult to work with all the moving parts of schedules to create a class. AP classes and core curriculum also beat out specialized classes, as Irwin said the need for three sections of AP Literature takes priority over one section of Classical Ideas and World Religions. A solution to this is taking courses online.
“If you’re wanting to take a higher level, AP niche class, there are [online courses],” Irwin said. “I think between 10 to 20 percent of students really thrive in an online learning environment. […] So that’s a better option for a lot of people.”
CPS attempts to present solutions to scheduling difficulties. For example, if a class cannot be created at RBHS, students may have the opportunity to take the course at Hickman High School. There are difficulties with this too, though; buses that transport students may not be running on the same schedule as the high schools, and students often end up missing parts of their classes.
Reed also said the counseling department has to deal with too many requests for a course. If there are more requests than seats in a classroom, some students may not be selected to take the course they wanted. There are many factors that go into scheduling, but the counseling department does their best to combat issues that arise.
“The schedule is like a giant puzzle, and sometimes not all the pieces fit,” Reed said. “This is why we really stress the importance of having alternate, or backup, class requests.”
Have you experienced scheduling difficulties? Let us know in the comments below.
