As part of a large cost-reduction program that the Fairfield Board of Education approved last month, we are revising the class schedules in grades 7-12.

In the Middle School (grades 7-8), teachers and students are currently grouped into teams. Teachers have one planning period to work on lesson plans, grading, etc., and a second planning period to work together as a team, when they could do things like review test data and look for ways to coordinate their lessons across subject areas.

At the Freshman School and at Fairfield Senior High School students currently take classes on what’s called a 4x4 block schedule. It’s four 90-minute classes per day, and halfway through the year they change to a second set of four new classes. Teachers teach three classes per day and have a 90-minute, individual, planning period every day.

Every possible school schedule, including the two above, has pros and cons. There is no one schedule that works best for all students. But the schedules we have in place right now are, relative to other alternatives, expensive to operate. There are many other schedule alternatives and many of them offer large cost savings because they require fewer staff members. We are facing a deficit of more than $5 million in two years and these schedule changes are projected to save more than $1 million every year they’re in place. They’re a major part of our cost reduction plan. That’s why we had to make them, and why we can’t delay them.

Students and parents have asked why we made the decision to change the schedules before we even knew what the new schedules would be. We had, in fact, done some preliminary work to make sure that there were less expensive schedule alternatives available for all the grades affected. But the job of reviewing all those alternatives and selecting the best one is a huge undertaking. I wasn’t going to ask our staff to do that until the school board had made its decision, which it did on March 18. The morning after that meeting the work started to select the new class schedules.

We have 12 people, mostly teachers and some administrators, working on it. I cannot thank them enough for the energy and professionalism they are bringing to this effort. For each school they have narrowed down the alternatives and are working through them to find the best possible schedule. Within the next week we expect that work to be finished.

Once the new schedules are selected we still have a lot of work to do. We need to get our students placed into their classes for next year. Our guidance department has committed to working with every student individually.

No matter what schedules are ultimately put in place, they will have strengths and weaknesses. Schedules are important, but they’re not the most critical factor in education. The real determinants of student success are kids coming to school ready to learn, parents making sure that happens, and teachers doing what they do best. I have a lot of confidence in our students, their parents and our teachers.

Published in the Fairfield Echo, April 8, 2010.