In the past few months, students, staff and administrators have been touring schools including Wayzata High School and Edina High School to examine alternative bell schedules. The school board will use the feedback from the community to make a decision on a new schedule on April. 23. Any changes voted on will not take effect until the 2025-2026 school year.

The current 6×2 schedule provides students with six class periods each day and two semesters and offers a total of 12 classes per year. To help make this decision, the school board directed high school students and staff to visit Wayzata High School’s 4×4 block schedule, with four classes per day and Edina High School’s seven-period, modified block.

The proposed 4×4 schedule would try to address three key goals: Allow for students to explore more electives and opportunities, provide flexibility and time for both students and staff and address students’ mental health needs. 

“We want to be able to do is have students have more opportunities at electives, more opportunities to get into certain pathways, things of high interest that they can then catapult towards life after high school,” Assistant Principal Matt Kraft said.

Administrators, parents and students have found that it limits the number of electives students are able to take during their high school career. For example, students who participate in both music and world languages are unable to fit additional electives into their schedule, including the required physical education and health classes needed to graduate. 

“For students to be musical and in language they have to take required courses online. They should be able to take lots of different things to find out what they like and what they’re interested in,” Spanish teacher Kirsten Carter said. 

The 4×4 block schedule aims to support students and teachers by giving them more time to learn and teach the material. Some students might benefit from these longer class periods.

“The students [at Wayzata] liked it because they still had the chance to see their teachers and be on the content frequently,” Carter said.

For students, the new schedule would allow more focused time, with their teacher readily available, to get their classwork done, all while still having more classes than the current schedule provides.

Junior Olivia Crabtree added that a new schedule with longer class periods would provide “more time to get homework done or to focus on certain topics because you’re not focusing on six different classes”.

These prospective schedule changes follow multiple other changes throughout the district including the new Lake Elmo Elementary bond that was passed in November, introduced by the new Superintendent Dr. Funk. The changes being made are very important and staff want to make sure students are heard.

“Students are very involved in this process. We have members of the Student Council that are on the site visit team. They’re part of the group of people that are sitting down, looking at the research, talking about the schedules. We don’t take this decision lightly. We don’t want to make decisions for students. We want to make decisions with students,” Kraft said.

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