Two major changes to scheduling will be implemented next year. Study hall will no longer be offered as a class, and the process for students requesting changes to their schedule will be different.
Vice Principal Steve Pape identified district-wide budget cuts as the cause of the end of study hall.
“[The school needed] places to unassign, and the study hall monitor is a place we could do that,” said Pape. “It’s not something that we would have chosen to do without the constraints that we’re facing, and it will cause some challenges for us schedule-wise.”
Photography and Digital Media teacher Beth Bundy expressed her concerns about the removal of study hall.
“My main concern is…how we’re gonna have enough spaces for students [in classes] if there’s not a study hall.”
Pape believes that study hall will be replaced with a limited number of academic centers.
“We used to have [academic centers] three years ago, which were led by teachers and they were really for kids who might need specific math support in a class like that, but they’re study hall-like.”
The process for how students request a change to their schedules will also be different next year, according to the LHS schedule change document.
During the first week of school, students will only be able to get their schedules changed in the event that an error occurred in their schedule. These errors could include students not having a class for certain periods, or not having sufficient credits to graduate or complete the IB diploma.
During the second and third week of school, students will be able to change electives. Past the third week, in order for students to change their schedules, one will have to withdraw from their class, putting it on their permanent transcript.
Counselor Alex Park explains the reasons behind the new process for desired changes in schedules.
“[The counselors] need to have time to fix those schedules to make sure that every kid has the classes they need to graduate,” said Park. “We also want to focus on students who are new at Lincoln… In years past, we have tried to prioritize those things, but we were getting tons of email requests from kids who just wanted a different elective or to switch to a different teacher, which we don’t do. That would steal our attention away from these higher priority [issues].”