A proposal will be put forward to the Board of Education on Jan. 21 to change the district’s high school schedule to a modified block schedule starting in the 2025-26 school year. This follows work that started last spring to analyze possible options of a new school day format.
While the elementary and middle school design teams also decide on possible changes to their school day schedules, specific times are yet to be finalized for the school day proposal.
“The basic structure of our school day in Naperville hasn’t changed for the 28 years that I’ve been here, but the outcomes we’re trying to meet for students have,” Principal Jackie Thornton said. “The discussion was about: ‘are there better ways that we could use the structure to allow instruction and assessment opportunities that are limited in our current schedule?’”
Classes will each meet three times a week under the proposed block schedule. During two of the opportunities, classes will meet for a longer time period compared to the current schedule Central uses. The third instructional opportunity will be called an “anchor day” where all of a student’s classes would meet, similar to a typical existing school day.
Students now experience different bell schedules on a daily basis, with a traditional eight period format on Mondays and Fridays, a nine period schedule on Tuesday and Thursdays, built in with SOAR targeted support opportunities, and a 9 a.m. late start on Wednesdays.
“We added the SOAR period and that was the first time we had any kind of flexible time in our day,” Thornton said. “We recognize that we want all kids to get to high levels of learning, but they all need something different in order to get there. So we need to be able to more flexibly use time.”
Late start was added to the schedule at the beginning of the 2018-19 school year. The SOAR schedule was implemented in the second semester of the 2021-22 school year.
“I just feel like we could do a better job of our students’ day being more manageable,” said Mike Stock, dean and a member of the school day design team. “Allowing them to put in the time in the building that they need to get the work done in the classroom, extracurricular, and then still have a reasonable amount of time at home to get homework done…it’s an opportunity for us to make it better for our kids.”
The team to examine possible new school day schedules was formed last spring. A survey was sent to students and staff that “asked a lot of questions about what’s working in this current schedule,” Thornton said. The team of staff across both high schools and district administration researched numerous possible schedules. This fall, the team reconvened and decided on the modified block schedule as the best to fit their priorities in a schedule.
“Our current instructional minutes are 232, and there were some of our initial designs that looked really great, but far fewer instructional minutes,” Thornton said.
Currently, high school students experience the earliest pick up and latest drop-off times. Any potential change to the school day start and end times will require consideration to transportation constraints as the same buses at the high school level also serve middle school and elementary students.
“A pretty significant issue for us is that students who ride the bus arrive about an hour before the school day starts, and then have quite a bit of time to wait after,” Thornton said. “The student day extends longer than any of our professional days do. That issue of transportation is only one of many things that can only be solved in collaboration with the other levels.”
