Fort Worth high school students will have longer classes, lunch beginning in the fall
Longer classes that meet fewer times a week and slightly longer lunches appear to be in the offing for city high school students.
After a two school-year dalliance with eight-period days, the Fort Worth Independent School District is nearing the end of the experiment and will move to a modified block schedule this fall. There will also be changes at city middle schools that will mean that students will take one fewer class each day.
Senior district administrators have been working on studying schedule options and offered the Board of Education an update on their thinking at a meeting Tuesday night. The details are still being reviewed, but the new schedule will take effect when the new school year begins in August.
Schedules are in the domain of the district’s staff, and the board will not vote on them.
The district suggested that under the new schedule teachers will cover their subjects with more depth. One board member cautioned that the quality of lessons will be dependent on teacher training.
It is not clear in what way the new schedule will affect student-teacher ratios.
In high school, on four days a week, first- and eighth-period classes will meet for 50 minutes. In the middle of those days, there will be three blocks of 90-minute classes and a lunch of 45 minutes, an increase of 10 minutes from the current schedule.
“Our students and our teachers wanted a longer lunch time. Basically they said they need a break in the day,” Cherie Washington, the district’s secondary schools chief, told the board.
For 11th- and 12th-grade students eligible to leave school grounds, “we wanted to make sure they had an opportunity to leave campus, go to lunch and return safely without rushing to get back to campus,” Washington said.
One day a week, high school students will go to each of their eight classes for 45 minutes each. This may be the schedule on Fridays or Mondays. The district has not made a decision on the day of the week.
Middle school students will move from eight, 45-minute periods a day to a seven-period day of 50-minute classes.
Jerry Moore, the district’s chief academic officer, told the board that adding five minutes to each period will be significant even though it may not appear to be.
“Many teachers were very vocal that a 50-minute class is a huge difference than a 45-minute class, and those additional five minutes really is of benefit to the teacher and to the student.”
David Saenz, the district’s senior innovation officer, told the board that he and other administrators considering scheduling matters had heard the thought of principals, counselors and teachers in focus groups. They also reviewed survey responses from students, parents and others.
Many of the board trustees asked questions of the administrators Tuesday night, but District 6 trustee Anne Darr, who is the parent of two district secondary students, appeared to be particularly interested in the recommendations.
Among her concerns, she said, was that “the math, the foreign language and the athletics departments are not real fond of it.”
Darr said that the quality of class content will take “significant professional development.”
“For our well-equipped teachers, it will be welcome,” Darr said. “For our ill-equipped teachers, it will be 90 minutes ... it’s going to be a long class period, and just having more time doesn’t mean having more work sheets.”
Students with special leaning needs may find 90-minute class periods too long, and the district should monitor resulting discipline statistics, Darr suggested.
Lydia Hudson, a district middle school department chair, said during the meeting’s public comment period that she supported much of the plan, but was concerned about having sufficient time to plan her classes and collaborate with colleagues.
“We’ve had to kind of squeeze in times before and after school, even passing periods, when I try to give them information, and especially having two new teachers in my subject, it’s been tough to make sure they’re completely up to date.”
