MCCSC recently formed a committee to debate and go over data for the possible schedule change called the High School Scheduling Advisory Committee. Although The Herald-Times recently published leaked documents that show that some people have been meeting about the matter since October of 2022.
The committee is made up of 15 people, including eight people from the community, and seven staff members chosen by the superintendent. Two members from the community must be students, one of which is South junior Amelia Robinson.
“There was a survey that was sent out in SRT, it must’ve been a couple of months ago. I filled it out just because I thought [MCCSC] needed to understand that there are students that want to participate, but I didn’t really expect to get picked, but then a couple weeks later I got an email saying that I had been chosen for [the committee] and then the board voted officially on me,” said Robinson.
The purposes of the committee are to review the MCCSC schedules for effectiveness and equity, to gather and examine data on student performance, to identify any inequity in the current schedules, and to provide a report summarizing their findings to be given to the Board of Trustees and the Superintendent.
If the committee finds any problems with the current schedules, they will weigh the alternatives and list possible solutions for the Board of Trustees and Superintendent.
“I personally don’t think there is an issue of equity, so I don’t think that there is a reason for change, but the entire point of the committee is to look at that and see if there is an issue and then potentially move on to looking at schedules and different things that we can do to fix that,” Robinson said.
South counseling department head Pat Cannon is also part of the committee. Although three of the South representative candidates were turned down before the superintendent explicitly said that he wanted a counselor, and finally accepted Cannon for the spot on the committee.
“What I’m trying to do is prove to the committee and the school board that what we do at South works. Can we tweak it? Absolutely. Can we always get better? For sure. But overall I don’t think our schedule is something that really should be messed with,” said Cannon.
Cannon said he has seen South go through all different types of schedules and has seen it from many different points of views and still believes that trimesters are what work best for most students.
Most people are looking for the data where they are shown an issue with the current way the schedules of the MCCSC high schools are. There hasn’t been any data presented to the community showing a problem and that is the thing the committee is most concerned with finding, whether that problem is an equity issue or student performance.
“I do know that the schedule that we have here works for us. Does that mean that it will work at North? No. Does that mean if we were forced to go on block, would that work for us? No. There’s no perfect schedule, if there was every school in the country would be using it.” Cannon said.
The final decision of what happens with everything, whether there’s an issue or if schedules should or will be changed, does go to the board, but the committee will collectively write up their report of their findings to send to them.
