Why is the schedule changing?

Though the district required a specific time to be allotted to advisory weekly, schools across LISD operated on different schedules. Now, all high schools will run on the same schedule within ten minutes of each other. This standardization of the schedule is to avoid the career center having unnecessary conflicts.

“[The career centers] didn’t know when to start their classes, and students would arrive late all the time,” Boughton said. “It was a district-wide issue that needed to be fixed.”

The number of required instructional minutes per class per day also contributed to this change. Currently, each class had the state-mandated 90 minutes, but first and fourth period had fewer minutes than previous years. Boughton said she wishes there had been more instructional minutes.

“I don’t think [advisory] was being utilized properly every day, so we were losing minutes,” Boughton said. “Especially with learning gaps from COVID-19, we can’t afford to waste time.”

Another thing that contributed to the new bell schedule is the state-mandated topics to cover each year, which are in constant flux. Currently, there are 14 which get stretched into multiple lessons. Many of those requirements are currently being met by sites like EverFi and Choices360, but it is not set in stone that those programs will be used in the future, nor that only 14 topics will be required next school year. 

“The biggest difficulty is that every year, what’s required by the state has changed,” Coen said. “So as the changes come, we have to adapt. That’s what keeps us from having consistency [each year].”