New Semester Brings Struggles
By: Emily Balentine
Semester switch is always rough on students and staff at William Chrisman High School. Between December 7th and January 4th of this school year, many students received schedules with holes, too-advanced, or repeat classes that needed to be exchanged for another class by their counselor.
Students reported varying amounts of issues with schedules, ranging from one class to six classes needing to be filled or altered. When asked about options for switching into a different class, students ran into issues. A few different problems came up, one being prerequisites, a class required before another class.
“You have to take another class before you can take the one that you want, so it’s just difficult to get what you’re going for,” said senior Cierra Ford.
“Some classes are full credit and you’re only supposed to have a half credit. Like I need a half credit but the class I wanted to take was a full credit,” said to senior Emani Holmes.
According to a sample of students that faced schedule issues, counselors took an average of one day to respond to their concerns via email, and were satisfied with the outcomes of their schedules. Another issue that students ran into was being able to tell which classes they could take and which ones were unavailable due to length of course. The length of course refers to the class being semester long (half credit) or full year (full credit).
If you were new to the district this semester or came in after the start of the school year, you had a hard time even finding classes that weren’t full for some blocks and a lack of options overall.
When counselors were asked about the issues, Ms. Swartz had this to say:
“The system is only as good as the information we give it....So if you ask for a class, the system knows that and the system fills with that. So then, I think people don’t necessarily understand that I do not go through and handpick everybody’s schedule or make things work; it fills based on what the computer says. And then I go through and look at ‘are their holes’ but to look at 350 kids to see if they haven’t already had that class. The system doesn’t put it in their schedule unless they request it. Holes are only created whenever there’s not a class they requested to make it fit. You have to be smart whenever you enter in your class choices….If you’re putting in classes with prerequisites, then it messes things up too. There’s just different ways to make the system work appropriately and so it’s all what we tell it to do. ”
Final schedules were handed out on the first day back after the break, the 4th of January 2022, but some changes are still being addressed.
“A student emails and then when they don’t get an answer in an hour and then they email again and they don’t get an answer and they email again, so they need to realize that there are 350 kids in [each] class and a large portion of them have questions and they need to just be patient.” Said Mrs. Swartz, regarding schedule change requests.
If you have schedule issues, Mr. Perry says that you should “Send an email to [your] counselor and the counselor will call [you] down and they’ll have a conversation about what they need to fix.”
Students reported varying amounts of issues with schedules, ranging from one class to six classes needing to be filled or altered. When asked about options for switching into a different class, students ran into issues. A few different problems came up, one being prerequisites, a class required before another class.
“You have to take another class before you can take the one that you want, so it’s just difficult to get what you’re going for,” said senior Cierra Ford.
“Some classes are full credit and you’re only supposed to have a half credit. Like I need a half credit but the class I wanted to take was a full credit,” said to senior Emani Holmes.
According to a sample of students that faced schedule issues, counselors took an average of one day to respond to their concerns via email, and were satisfied with the outcomes of their schedules. Another issue that students ran into was being able to tell which classes they could take and which ones were unavailable due to length of course. The length of course refers to the class being semester long (half credit) or full year (full credit).
If you were new to the district this semester or came in after the start of the school year, you had a hard time even finding classes that weren’t full for some blocks and a lack of options overall.
When counselors were asked about the issues, Ms. Swartz had this to say:
“The system is only as good as the information we give it....So if you ask for a class, the system knows that and the system fills with that. So then, I think people don’t necessarily understand that I do not go through and handpick everybody’s schedule or make things work; it fills based on what the computer says. And then I go through and look at ‘are their holes’ but to look at 350 kids to see if they haven’t already had that class. The system doesn’t put it in their schedule unless they request it. Holes are only created whenever there’s not a class they requested to make it fit. You have to be smart whenever you enter in your class choices….If you’re putting in classes with prerequisites, then it messes things up too. There’s just different ways to make the system work appropriately and so it’s all what we tell it to do. ”
Final schedules were handed out on the first day back after the break, the 4th of January 2022, but some changes are still being addressed.
“A student emails and then when they don’t get an answer in an hour and then they email again and they don’t get an answer and they email again, so they need to realize that there are 350 kids in [each] class and a large portion of them have questions and they need to just be patient.” Said Mrs. Swartz, regarding schedule change requests.
If you have schedule issues, Mr. Perry says that you should “Send an email to [your] counselor and the counselor will call [you] down and they’ll have a conversation about what they need to fix.”