Shari Dixon, student data specialist at McKay High School, works through the intricacies of class scheduling at her desk on Thursday, September 3. (Amanda Loman/Salem Reporter)
Sam Mendez says building a high school schedule is like a game of Jenga: you move one block and hope it doesn’t bring the entire tower toppling down.
Shari Dixon likens it to chess: requiring intricate strategy because one move may have unforeseen consequences down the line.
The two are “student data specialists,” the title given to spreadsheet wizards in Salem-Keizer School District high schools. They take thousands of forms detailing the classes students want to take, teacher availability and more and work out the school’s master schedule. It’s the document showing which classes each teacher is teaching when, and which 30 students are enrolled in first period biology or third period Spanish.
The job is busiest in late summer as the pressure grows to get ready for the start of school. Twelve hour days, including on weekends, are not uncommon.
“It’s crunch time,” Mendez said.
But Mendez, who builds the schedule for South Salem High School, and Dixon, who’s responsible for McKay, said the constraints they’re under this year are unlike anything they’ve encountered before.
They’re contending with state health regulations that require students to be placed in small “cohorts,” a stable group of classmates they interact with during the day, if schools resume in-person. Though Salem-Keizer won’t return to school buildings until November at the earliest, they’re scheduling classes now to accommodate that rule, so any transition is as seamless as possible.
The process is wreaking havoc on elective classes. In a normal year, an art class like mixed media would be open to any student, freshman through senior.
But at all six district high schools, nearly all classes will be limited to students in the same grade to cut down on mixing between groups. Juniors and seniors, who will remain in online classes through at least the end of first semester, can be mixed in some classes to give them more options.
At McKay, that means a choir program which normally has introductory men’s and women’s ensembles, a concert choir and a jazz choir will be replaced with 9th grade choir, 10th grade choir and so on.
Ranae Quiring, McKay’s curriculum assistant principal, works with Dixon to create the schedule. Her role includes deciding which classes to offer based on student demand and teacher availability.
This year’s process, she said, is the opposite of what she and other educators try to do normally: give students as many options as possible.
“It’s not pretty,” she said.
The high school schedule is also changing after feedback from students, who said juggling eight classes online in the spring involved too many moving pieces.
The typical eight-course load is being halved to four classes at a time, each meeting for twice as many hours per week, with a semester-long class now condensed into one quarter.
At all six Salem-Keizer high schools, that means students will be scheduled for either math and science or social studies and English, plus two electives, at a time.
Mendez said that change, which came midsummer, meant he couldn’t start work on the schedule until after the 4th of July.
“I was kind of on a holding pattern because I didn’t know how our schedule was going to look,” he said. But despite the long hours, he said he’s enjoyed the challenge.
“It kept me busy when we’re on lockdown, which was kind of nice,” he said.
Mendez, Dixon and their peers at other district high schools are working overtime this week to complete the master schedule and assign students to classes. At McKay, school counselors got a look at a near-final version Sept. 3.
They’re bracing for a busier than usual year fielding student questions and schedule change requests.
High school students can expect to receive rough schedules Sept. 8 and will have a week to request changes before school starts Sept. 15.
Each student will only be able to move to classes in the cohort they’ve been assigned, meaning fewer options to switch. Across the district, each high school grade has been split into at least two groups: half attending live classes on Tuesday and Thursday, and two on Wednesday and Friday. The other days of the week, students will work on assignments at home.
The goal is to make a switch back to in-person class as simple as possible, since students will already be in groups and classes that meet state requirements. Then, it’s just a matter of waiting for the county’s reported coronavirus cases to fall.
“If Marion County all of a sudden gets a great report, we’re ready to go,” Quiring said.
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Contact reporter Rachel Alexander: [email protected] or 503-575-1241.
Rachel Alexander is Salem Reporter’s managing editor. She joined Salem Reporter when it was founded in 2018 and covers city news, education, nonprofits and a little bit of everything else. She’s been a journalist in Oregon and Washington for a decade. Outside of work, she’s a skater and board member with Salem’s Cherry City Roller Derby and can often be found with her nose buried in a book.
