Kellogg School Board approves schedule change
The Kellogg School Board (KSB) has approved the changing of Kellogg High School’s daily schedule from its current format to a new block style format.
In years past, the school adhered to the traditional 7-periods a day with a homeroom period each day except for the shortened Wednesday school day.
The new block format will break up the days into A and B days where students will attend their period 1, 3, 5, & 7 classes on Mondays and Thursdays (or A days) and then periods 2, 4, 6, & 7 on Tuesdays and Fridays (B days), both days will still have a homeroom period for the students as well.
Classes will be an hour and half long during the block days, with the exception of the 7th period which will be an hour each day except Wednesday.
They will also have a slightly extended lunch period, which should be a benefit to the health and safety of the students.
Wednesdays will remain a shortened day, but students will go to periods 1 through 6 each day for 50 minutes each with no homeroom or 7th period.
The change comes on the heels of Kellogg being recently recognized as a top school in the state and country according to US News and this may be one of the ways they begin shoring up some of the places they felt they had shortcomings.
“We are below the state average in math,” KHS principal Curt-Randall Bayer said last month. “We made improvements, but we are still below that average and we need to continue working to get to that average or above it.”
How can changing the schedule help resolve that issue?
According to Bayer in the presentation he gave to the KSB, he discussed some of the benefits that accompany block style scheduling and not just for the students.
“This will help increase engagement time,” Bayer said. “Teachers will see fewer students during the day, giving them more time for individualized instruction. With the increased span of teaching time, longer cooperative learning activities can be completed in one class period.
Teachers have extended time for planning and students have more time for reflection and less information to process over the course of a school day.”
On a normal day now, a student could take up to seven tests over the course of the day, now students will have just four classes on a normal day and will have extended time to get them done.
There were some concerns from the board, things like athletes (or any extracurricular participants) and if the new schedule will make it more difficult to make up any missed school, but after hearing Bayer out, the proposal passed and KHS will be implementing their new schedule for the 2017-18 school year.