Anonymous wrote:FWIW the same thing happened last year and my dd's schedule didn't change, nor did her friends'. However, I'm sure that some schedules change the week before school begins as they try to hand schedule kids who are new or request changes.
I work at a MCPS school as a counselor. Everyone is more or less scheduled but it could change on a dime. Once schedules are input, which is what you’re seeing, counselors then have to do the following:
Fix mistakes
Move kids around who for whatever reason can’t be together
Check to make sure sections are balanced so that there are equal numbers of kids with IEPs, or with ESOL needs, or 504 plans. In that week before school starts teachers check the lists and some go ballistic if they think they have an unfair or unbalanced class in relation to others. Since all the sections are capped, both in terms of IEP numbers in inclusion classes and the overall number caps, sometimes we need to move a whole bunch of kids around to get it to work. Then there are the kids who drop orchestra or want orchestra, or didn’t have an IEP and now do, or who move in last minute and have such specific course needs we have to move others to make it work. So your schedule may stay this way, but it also may not. Keep in mind that teachers can move around too if they’re teaching period 2 algebra right now, that could change. The reason we tell you to come in the last week is so you don’t then get inadvertently moved around by someone. Others have access to scheduling too, ie the scheduling admin.