Roosevelt High School Conquers
Your Master Schedule Fears

by Joseph Cook
Communications Editor
LA Chamber of Commerce/UNITE-LA

During the last three years, Roosevelt High School has taken bold strides to convert their large comprehensive high school into small learning communities.

"We've 'pseudo-decentralized' things here.  A lot of other schools are afraid to do what we do," says Lori Pawinski, Assistant Principal of Instruction at Roosevelt High School.  Her boisterous voice beats away the clamor of LAUSD principals enjoying their lunch break at Thursday's AB75 training event, held at the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce.

Each of the 13 small schools at Roosevelt High School has autonomy over its own budget and schedule.  "It empowers teachers and lets them -- it makes them take ownership of their schedule and their SLC," Pawinski says. 

At a meeting of the eight Cohort IV schools on Wednesday, February 2, API Pawinski presented Roosevelt's approach to scheduling 4,639 students in 13 small learning communities.  In their attempts to develop small learning communities, many high schools in and out of Los Angeles have found the master schedule to be the biggest stumbling block, but the leadership at Roosevelt made it into a strength instead.

"Now they want to come and watch us do the master schedule," Pawinski says, laughing.  She described a room filled with department chairs, lead teachers and assistant principals, deliberating over big boards for hours at a stretch.  Last year, Pawinski and her team worked until midnight to get everything just right, but that didn't deter the Cohort.  "I didn't even show them the Excel program we use, and they were already excited."

It used to be that scheduling was a lonely, unappreciated job.  Counselors worked alone, hunched over a computer as they struggled with entering data into a program called "the Scheduler."

"The Scheduler" is supposed to enable school counselors and staff to organize every class and every student efficiently and effectively.  Unfortunately, the program is not equipped to handle 13 small learning communities in one location, like what exists at Roosevelt.

"Sure, you could actually use it [for 13 SLCs], but you'd have to frontload so much info into the Scheduler... it's much, much easier to hand-program it."

Pawinski is quick to acknowledge the enormous efforts made by Roosevelt's counselors: "They had a huge piece in developing this.  And once the teachers got involved, they learned how time consuming and monotonous a task scheduling is.  The shared responsibilities helped everyone gain a new respect, a whole new understanding for the job."

"The Scheduler wasn't exactly foolproof," Pawinski explains, pointing out another reason why Roosevelt moved to a hand-drawn schedule.  "It was making mistakes that people wouldn't, like putting 50 students into a classroom while leaving another almost empty."

"We used to get calls from teachers demanding that the students be cleared out immediately.  But that sort of instant demand has stopped -- teachers understand the kind of effort it takes to move everyone around, and they're patient when it happens."

Lori acknowledges that human error is still there, but "it's nothing like what we had with the Scheduler."

Roosevelt's hand-coding began in July 2003, under Pawinski's watch as API of B-track.

"We were down to just one counselor… and he just needed help.  There was no way one man could do the scheduling for a whole school."  So the teachers pitched in, and soon B-track's success drew the attention of the rest of Roosevelt.

In the end, all 13 small learning communities jumped on the bandwagon, designing their schedules by hand.  Last year, a teacher at Roosevelt developed an Excel program -- "That saved us 25% more time." -- and the school hired a clerk to take the data entry pieces out of counselors hands.

Asked repeatedly if there were any particular challenge that faced the hand-scheduling efforts, or if anyone resisted the changes, Pawinski responds with a baffled, "Of course not!"

"Letting teachers participate in the scheduling makes it better for everyone -- especially the students.  And that's why we're here, for the kids."

"Well, okay, we did have one problem once… with a feeder school, that sent us 150 students we weren't expecting.  We asked them to be patient, and they were, and we had everyone in classes by the end of the week."