The Pleasanton school board has unanimously approved new bell schedules at Foothill High School and Harvest Park Middle School for next school year.
Both schedules will add an additional access period Tuesdays and Thursdays, a period staff hopes will give students the opportunity to receive extra support from teachers, with the ultimate goal of reducing student stress and improving their academics.
“The big goal of our FLEX period is to provide a schedule, a structure that’s going to allow teachers to support all of our students in meeting their academic, social and emotional needs during the school day,” Amanda Michel, an eighth grade block teacher at Harvest Park, said at the board meeting last week.
This is not a new concept, as Amador Valley High School began implementing a similar access period this year, with an evaluation of the adjusted schedule set for May. The pilot programs will be enacted in the 2018-19 school year.
When presenting the proposed schedules, staff from the two sites highlighted the benefits of having the access period during the school day and cited positive outcomes from access periods at other schools.
“The students we talked to at the other schools said that they now feel like it’s easier to approach their teachers because they have this set-aside time,” said Jennifer Friesen, a vice principal at Foothill and one of the presenters during the April 17 board meeting.
“They don’t have to feel like they are bothering their teachers,” she added, by making appointments to meet before or after school hours.
The additional period could also serve as a form of intervention, allowing teachers to determine if a student needed extra support before they fell too far behind, staff said.
At Harvest Park, the new schedule will add a 30-minute “FLEX period” after third period on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Every week, teachers will put FLEX offerings into an online system, offerings such as study sessions, mindfulness, organizational help, math games and more. Some students may be assigned a FLEX session by their teacher, but otherwise students can choose whichever session they want.
Though students are not enrolled in a particular class for the semester, attendance will still be taken.
To make room for the new period, on Tuesdays and Thursdays the other classes will be reduced by three minutes, and eight minutes will come out of passing periods to lunch and Harvest Park TV time (a daily broadcast by the media class).
At Foothill, the new schedule would add in a 40-minute “Falcon Flex period,” also on Tuesdays and Thursdays. This period would be teacher-based rather than class-based, Foothill staff said. For tracking purposes, each student would be assigned a Falcon Flex period (similar to a homeroom), but could then leave and attend another teacher’s access period during the time.
Similarly to Harvest Park, students could use this time to make up work, review difficult topics with their teachers or engage in other types of support activities.
To accommodate the time required for the access period, staff at Foothill decided to implement a late-start schedule on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, a model they say can help address chronic student sleep-deprivation.
On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, the first regular period is expected to begin at 8:40 a.m. and the last period will end at 2:58 p.m. — these times exclude “A” and “B” periods, non-core classes such as instrumental groups or other specialized programs that meet before the first and last regular periods, respectively. Tuesdays and Thursdays will start close to their present time at 8 a.m., but each class period will be shortened by about five minutes to 52 minutes each.
This model stands in contrast to the block schedule implemented at Amador this past school year.
“I’m kind of intrigued by being able to compare the experiences,” Trustee Joan Laursen said.
Stakeholders at both sites were surveyed, with results showing all groups to be in favor of the change at levels of 68% and higher. At Harvest Park, 41 parents/guardians, 387 students and 50 teachers took the survey, while at Foothill, 100 staff members, 319 parents and 397 students responded.
At Harvest Park, the adjustment is expected to cost $5,000-$6,000 out of site discretionary funds, and at Foothill the change is estimated to cost $20,000, paid for using site discretionary funds and PTSA support.
Friesen emphasized that they are still working on ironing out the logistics of the implementation, including how attendance would be counted during the Falcon Flex period.
Parent Heidi Maher was the only member of the public to speak on this item.
Maher (no relation to Trustee Steve Maher) voiced the concern that the late start time would pose difficulties for working parents, and pointed out that while the survey results indeed showed a favorable consensus on the new schedule, she didn’t feel the number of parents who took the survey was great enough to be representative of the district.
“It just worries me that we’re making decisions based on 14% of the school population,” she said.
Board President Mark Miller also expressed some dissatisfaction with how the proposed Foothill schedule was crafted, pointing to what he saw as a lack of precision in the way surveys were conducted.
“From a process perspective, I really think we need to have our act together on that, going forward,” Miller said.
Ultimately, the board decided to move ahead and approve both proposed schedules. However, they requested that the Foothill team return with further presentations and logistical information.
