This year has reached a new record of schedule changes with over 1,000 requests from students, according to the De Pere HS counselors.
In the Google form, there were about 800 requests, and there were 200-300 requests through email, counselors said. The school has about 1,500 students, so more than half the school had requested for a change in their schedule.
This is a huge increase from the previous years, last year having around 700. The counselors said that they were more comfortable with having a lower member so that all four of them could have a few hundred to do.
“It was very busy trying to get everything done and kids in the right classes in a short amount of time,” said counselor Kari Wilihnganz.
It took the first few weeks of school for students and classrooms to get settled. Most classes had to be balanced if a class was too big or small. This also makes it rough for the teachers because they want to get students into the right spots and classes.
Some of these schedule changes weren’t always the most reasonable, said Wilihnganz. There were some students who wanted to change lunches or classes just to be with their friends or they wanted to be with certain teachers.
“Those aren’t always helpful in the long run because I think it’s really good for kids to have to try new things and be with new people,” she said. “If we are always accommodating to make them be with people they know and like, that doesn’t stretch them to do things out of their comfort zone.”
Counselor Carla Duevel also noticed the same trend.
“I really want kids to feel settled and feel good about where they are in class and where they are all day,” she said.
Though, the majority of the schedule changes were helpful for students. For example, kids had a change in their career path, the class was too difficult for them, or they didn’t want a specific elective anymore.
Students were switching from many different classes, but the most popular was speed and strength. This was because many students either wanted it later in the day, or they didn’t need it for their first semester.
Otherwise, it was lunch and release hours for seniors that were other popular requests. Again, many students wanted to either be with their friends or they preferred that lunch be a specific hour, or seniors wanted to be released at a certain hour of the day either for work or just to beat everyone to the road first!
For the future, Willihnganz said that it is more beneficial to request changes earlier before school, because it gives counselors a chance to figure out what section a teacher is going to teach, and how many sections to run.
“If we have changes, it affects the numbers and sometimes that’s like, ‘Oh maybe we would not want to run that class if we knew it was only going to be 8 or 9 students’,” she said.
