001hello and good evening we're glad you're here tonight my name is sam camera and i'm an interim assistant principal and i'm mickey gramacki assistant principal and also administrative liaison to the special education department at the high school all right so we're here tonight to offer cpac families and possibly students if you're there an opportunity to go through next year's schedule which is changing to a 4x4 block for next year and we really wanted to give families an opportunity to ask specific questions that might not be as relevant in a much larger group setting so we really wanted to dedicate tonight to our families and students with ieps at the high school so we're going to get started with the presentation if you've been to one of our town halls or if you've watched a recent
002school committee meeting you may have already seen this presentation on the 4x4 block schedule but for those of you who haven't we thought we would go through it and then we'll just ask you to put any questions comments that you have in the stream and at the same time um sam's position uh she'll be building the master schedule this year and then i too will be closely involved with the schedule so we really urge you to reach out individually if you have specific questions and concerns obviously our liaisons our special education department head are also there for you so we just want you to feel that that more personalized approach that you certainly can reach out with specific questions or concerns um so i'm going to get started uh i'm going to have us disappear
003so this screen is it's just a little bit larger and keep in mind if you want it to be even larger you can click anywhere in the center of the screen and it'll go full screen okay great so are you able to advance the next slide nope okay we even tested this today all right multiple times maybe it's a lag let me give it a second so mickey let me stop sharing and then you can share yours okay so i have a timeline here i don't know if that's yours or mine oh that's yeah that's mine so i will once you're sharing it should show ella are you seeing it on the youtube channel is it showing it is no it's not yet okay our apologies everybody we tested this three times today and there's
004some glitch in my the way my communi my computer communicates okay so you're a little bit advanced there all right i'm gonna go back okay um so we're starting with the background in rationale for the 4x4 block um so the uncertainty about covid uncertainty about the fall and our need for a lot of time to actually build a master schedule and take student requests led to the superintendent directive to plan a block schedule for next year and the goal in that schedule is to reduce the number of cohorts within a school day so on february 9th the school committee actually made a statement about uh the high school being in person fully in the fall and so therefore we are implementing this 4x4 block schedule so here's the timeline we've moved through some of it
005in december and january we convened a scheduling committee to evaluate the past and present schedule we updated tnl which stands for teaching and learning those are the department heads on this process and then this is the these are the names of the folks that are on that committee um in february we gathered input and and feedback um from all of the faculty about the proposed schedule um and then in march which is now we're working pretty diligently on the program of studies so the department heads and the departments are meeting with all of the faculty members we're going to move into course registration very shortly here and then we're going to go ahead and finalize summer the summer school format and the offerings and then in early april we'll begin course registration and actually april
0068th we have a date for the eighth grade family curriculum night i should fix this slide um and that's april 8th and then in may we'll do course verification and then as as the course verifications come in we'll build the schedule um throughout the summer so when when the directive came to go into a block schedule we looked at a couple different options for block schedules the by three you know would not give students a lot of choice um we also looked at what we're in now the three by three plus one um which would be slightly more choices but it would lead to this um potentially random year-long block that would be different for all students so that that was rather awkward and we really landed in in what we are going with the
0074x4 block with the semester format so that means that students will have four classes in the fall and then they'll have four classes in the spring the ab block is a very popular block schedule but because all eight courses meet at a time for each day and it rotates every other day that really didn't accomplish the goal of minimizing cohorts oh and we did look at the trimester that question had come up those of you who might have older children know that many years ago we were in a trimester schedule and for many people that schedule worked really well we just felt that it would be such a redesign challenge for a one-year schedule so this is the the schedule itself i'm going to talk you through it the teacher day is approximately 805 to
0083 35 and that's going to depend a little bit on the transportation and so the times here are our estimations as a result in the morning teachers will begin with collaboration iep and 504 meetings faculty meetings as well as department meetings on the left hand side you'll see a two lunch option and then on the right hand side of this table you'll see a three lunch option the two lunch option um is a little bit more compressed during that c block which means that there would be more students in the cafeteria in eating lunch and so one of the reasons we came up with both a two and three block schedule was to we're not quite sure if we can have that many students in the cafeteria at once and so my suspicion is we'll
009be going with the three lunch block which means again a period starts at 905 and then b period at 10 30 c period is 11 55 and you'll see there are three different slots there so one of them would function as a lunch block and then d block runs from 2 to 320 and then we have this sort of d plus which is some executive functioning support for students opportunities for students to check in what's their homework for the night what do they need to bring home do they need to go to their locker do they need to talk to the teacher do they need to send an email so there will be um a little bit of opportunity for for students to check in with adults at that time there are going to be
010um sports teams needing to to miss some of d block depending on the sport and depending on what time of year so all the students um all students will you know if they're on a team and need to leave early for a match or a game may miss some of d block um and so it will be their responsibility to to check in with that teacher um about their absence and to make sure that they they know what they're missing our athletic director is going to be communicating with area athletic directors to see if there are options um to start matches and games a little bit later so we're still working on that but in in general they won't miss a great deal so we tried to anticipate what questions would come up with one
011of the questions um being about music ensembles that that's definitely an important question so like most 4x4 blocks we will have a music block that will alternate every other day with one of the courses that the student selects and we will also be offering quarter electives so our goal was to have students that are involved in the music program and this next year it will also include a dance ensemble so students can be part of the dance theater ensemble every other day and um and students then would also have opportunities to take quarter electives um which is a segue into the next question so our most electives next year will run for 45 days so in the fall for each block students could elect two different electives and so basically each block allows students the
012opportunity for those two electives there's a question about directed studies that comes up with this schedule so um i'm not aware of any schools that have directed study we're not planning to have directed studies in the schedule next year we don't think that it's wise to have a quarter of a of an academic day be devoted to a directed study and at the same time we know that teachers really need to embed extra help support and time for students to catch up within that 80-minute block so the next question is what about academic skills so for students in special ed programming the teams that work on that program programming our needs are going to need to determine um this the services that individual students need so some students may require an 80-minute block but other
013students might not um so we will offer academic skills in an 80-minute block and again we'll have to decide that in individual teams to figure out um what what's needed for each individual student um will some courses run year-long in a by four block so the answer to that question is yes there will be a few courses that run for the full year that's known as double blocked examples of this are algebra one integrated math topics in math a b ap which is a bc calculus as well as ap physics some courses are actually going to run three quarters of the year as well which then would give a little which would give the last quarter or one quarter as an opportunity for an elective the next question is what about doubling up on math
014and world language so students are going to be permitted to request additional blocks in academic departments and we're going to do our best to accommodate those requests so as we end our presentation a question has come up about the following school year so for the 22-23 school year technically we would we would return to the negotiated seven drop one schedule but we will be convening a scheduling committee in late fall that will include student input family input faculty and staff to determine what schedule makes the most sense for amherst high school the following year and um and then we'll go through that process which could be continuing with a block modifying the block or potentially going back to the seven drop one so where can i learn more about the four by four block so
015locally northampton high school one of our neighboring high schools is in the four 4x4 block and cambridge ridge and latin is a school out near boston that has moved to a 4x4 block and has actually put a lot of wonderful resources on their website when we convened our first scheduling committee we referenced many of the documents that they had on their website so that's a place where you can certainly learn about how other schools have implemented the 4x4 block okay so we're going gonna go ahead and move into the question and answer form of this um so i there's a little bit of lag when the questions come in i will post the questions up so you can read them and we'll read them out loud but yes feel free to ask questions on anything
016we've spoken about just now i have a hard time believing there are no questions well so i checked the youtube channel to see if there are any questions over there and there are none um well so i checked the youtube channel to see and so i think we'll leave you with a reminder that you're always welcome to contact us directly um as well as your child's liaison and also a reminder that on april 8th we will have an eighth grade family night so that if you um know if you if your child's in eighth grade or you know anyone in eighth grade we will be doing a special evening presentation on the entire ninth grade uh course offerings as well as an introduction to the high school so we hope that you all attend that
017april 8th evening so again thank you so much very happy to to speak to cpac and uh we hope everyone has a good evening and i think the good news is you know how to reach us if you do have questions mickey i'm just going to give it another 30 seconds before i end the broadcast just in case someone thinks of something but i think i think we're good okay all right good evening everybody thank you