On Jan. 21, the BOE approved a new rotating drop block schedule, including new start and end times, effective for the 2025-2026 school year. The decision, which was years in the making, was officially approved as part of the district’s strategic planning initiative, aiming to improve student learning, reduce stress and offer more flexibility for both students and staff.
“This has been a discussion for years and years at the high school and intermediate school level,” said Dr. Matt Bolton, the assistant superintendent of curriculum, instruction and assessment. “We needed to make it part of a bigger and broader plan for the whole district.”
The most noticeable change will be the structure of the school day itself. Instead of attending the same 8 or 9 classes daily, students will have 6, 55-minute classes each day with the first block starting at 7:55 a.m and the last block ending at 2:49 p.m. These classes will rotate through an “A, B, C, D” day schedule, meaning that one morning and one afternoon class will drop each day.
The goal of this change is to provide deeper learning opportunities while reducing cognitive overload. “Cognitive load theory suggests that when students are bombarded with too much information in a day, retention and deep learning suffer,” Dr. Bolton said. “By cutting down the number of classes per day, students can focus more on each subject and experience less stress.”
“One of our objectives was to really take a hard look at the way in which we spend time in our schools,” said Dr. Bolton. “We are trying to provide students with a deeper learning experience including more hands-on learning, and by extending class periods, we avoid the burden of unfinished work on top of homework.”
Along with the rotating, drop schedule, the school is introducing a single 55-minute block lunch, during which all students will eat at the same time. While this does present logistical challenges, the district is working on solutions, such as adding food kiosks and expanding seating areas to spread students throughout the school including more capacity for outdoor seating.
“Schools that have implemented a block lunch system have seen students rise to the occasion, using the time wisely for socializing, club meetings or extra help from teachers,” Dr. Bolton said.
Another new aspect of the approved schedule layout is a floating homeroom period, where students will remain in their third block of the day to view BDTV’s morning announcements. This homeroom period for viewing the announcments will be nine minutes long.
Since the changes are significant, the district is aware that challenges may arise once we start the new schedule. Though there won’t be a full test run of the schedule this year, adjustments will be made based on student and teacher feedback.
“This is new schedule 1.0,” Dr. Bolton said. “We’re going to continue to collect feedback and tweak things as needed.”