By Lauren Young

Staff Writer

More Cazenovia High School students may be getting scheduled lunch periods this fall, as the school’s board of education discussed altering the structure of class schedules to allow for more downtime and more frequent classes.

Susan Tresco of the Cazenovia High School Counseling Department gave a presentation on the issue at the latest board of education meeting on July 30, explaining how more students will be getting scheduled, 40-minute lunches with the new “student-focused” schedule.

Tresco, who elaborated on changes focused on the eighth grade schedule, said this will “solve the issue where some of our students are not able to have a scheduled lunch.”

Currently, most students eat during classes as their schedules are too full to allow for a 40-minute break. According to data from last year, Tresco said, using the four-day cycle, 23 eighth grade students did not have a lunch on day one, 20 students did not have a lunch on day two and three and 25 students did not have a lunch on day four. Tresco said the school has since brought that number down to seven.

Last summer the school ran this alternate schedule and found that “there was a large population of our students that were going to have increased downtime – upwards to an hour a day — if we move to that proposed schedule,” said Tresco.

After this schedule was presented, a committee composed of community and board members, teachers and students was formed and met three to four times throughout the year to discuss its feasibility for the fall 2018 school year.

“Where we can, we’ve made some improvements,” she said. “We’ve definitely made some strides, especially for the eighth graders coming into the high school.”

While chamber choir is “traditionally [a] block class,” Tresco suggested making the class run 40 minutes every day rather than 80 minutes every other day — prompting “more contact with frequence.”

For the eighth grade schedule, Tresco said the exploratory section (a class featuring 10-week courses in computers, family consumer science, art and music) of each student’s schedule will move to sixth period, meaning one period each day will be spend in that class for the 10 weeks of each course.

This will work for some students, except those in accelerated courses.

For example, those in an accelerated science course will be in that class for three days out of the four-day cycle.

“So there is one section where the accelerated students will have the traditional block of their exploratory class,” said Tresco. “They’re all receiving the same amount of instruction, just a little bit differently.”

Tresco said a typical eighth grade student will take English, social studies, math, science, a foreign language, physical education, an exploratory class and half-year of health class and the other half a technology class. For some students, they may even get a study hall.

For students not enrolled in musical performance groups, AIS (Academic Intervention Services) or special education services, English and social studies classes will occur in blocks and math classes will occur twice a week.

Tresco said if a student is enrolled in one musical performance class they will be able to have lunch two days out of the cycle while a student taking two music performance classes may not have a scheduled lunch at all.

According to an estimated Class of 2023 projection of 113 students, 59 will participate in music. Of those 59 students, 26 of them will be in an accelerated science class. Of those 26, eight of them will take two musical performance classes. Out of a four-day cycle, five of those students will not have a scheduled lunch period. One of them will have lunch every other day and three students will have one lunch out of a three-day cycle.

Of the 26 students who are taking a music course, 18 will participate in only one music organization — of these students 16 will have a lunch every other day and two students will have a lunch one day out of the cycle.

“All of the students, eighth grade and up, when they met with [counselors] for scheduling … they talked to each of the students about the impact of the courses they were selecting to make sure that … [there is] informed consent,” said Tresco. “Our next steps might be to start looking at taking music out of the lunch period altogether, and possibly look at blocking,” she added.

Superintendent Matt Reilly said Tresco meets with “hundreds of schedulers across the state and beyond” to aid in developing new scheduling practices and the district is always looking for ways to alter such practices to meet the evolving needs of students.