Returning to school is painful. Even for the few students who welcome school with open arms. Such positive feelings can be offset by conflicts in class schedules. When a student is compelled to make unwanted changes that may harm his or her chance of getting into a dream college, or that will replace an enjoyable course with a bland one, leaving the haven of bed in the mornings to sit in a lackluster, white-walled educational containment becomes that much more tedious. After all, what’s there to enjoy about a class the student never signed up for?
So what lies behind these forced schedules changes? For one thing, some classes are only available at certain periods; and a student may have that period filled with another class they can’t drop. Usually, there are very few teachers teaching a class (blame the budget cuts!) and they teach these classes during the same period rather than holding these classes during consecutive periods, which would be more advantageous to students with scheduling conflicts. Furthermore, classes can only hold 39 people maximum, and a teacher can have no more than 180 students in all of their classes put together. Taking into consideration the fact that FVHS has a bit more than 3,000 students, that is not enough room to allow every student to have every class they want. Consequently, many students are unable to take a certain courses because the classes are full.
Then there is the issue of linked classes. Is it necessary to see the exact same set of people two periods or so in a row? The concept may have seemed ideal: link two classes together so people can study with the same friends and avoid disclosing test questions to friends in other periods. Also, two teachers are able to work together to cover a matter that may have been tiresome to teach solo. In reality, there are flaws to the proposal. For one, linking classes won’t stop students from disclosing test questions to other periods, at least not when friendships have already been established and pressure, especially among AP students, is high. For another, a student is unable to enroll in one linked class without enrolling in the other; however, that same student may be enrolled in a class during the same period that they can not drop. The student might be forced to drop a possibly vital class in order to enroll in both linked classes, or the student might be forced to scrap both classes altogether to take a lower-level class because nothing else fits into the schedule. Either way, it’s a lose-lose situation.
However, before anyone goes off to attack their counselors or the school board, the underlying factors behind these problems must be analyzed. Although unlinking classes would be a good idea next year, solutions to other problems are a bit trickier. Few teachers are present to teach a class because
California’s education system simply has no money, a fact that has become a mantra amongst FVHS teachers. This makes it rather difficult to hire more teachers or open more classes because other students’ needs have to be fulfilled as well, and certain classes needed for graduation take priority over electives, even if they’re weighted electives. Furthermore, extending the maximum capacity of a class is probably asking too much of a teacher; after all, they do have nerves, stress, and limits as well. Then what is to be done? Students with scheduling conflicts are trapped between a rock and a hard place.
