Trial for flex schedule 2.0 implemented

During the week of Jan. 28, Samo had its second flex schedule trial run of the 2018-19 school year. The flex schedule featured a 57 minute long flex period twice a week, during which students had the opportunity to receive help from teachers and peers. The school also adopted a block schedule on the same two days that the flex period occurs. School principal Antonio Shelton recognizes that the flex period has the potential to be very beneficial for many students if it were to be fully adopted next year.“Our issue is equity and access, not every kid has $100 to pay for a tutor, so we should access the individuals that actually know the material best, which is our staff. This would then work towards us closing our achievement gap,” Shelton said. A similar trial run occured in Nov. of 2018, and since then multiple changes have been made to the schedule in response to feedback from students and teachers. The main complaint was that the flex period was too early in the day and week, when students had not yet received homework from any of their classes, and therefore were unable to use the flex time productively. To combat this, the flex periods were moved to Tuesday and Wednesday instead of Monday and Tuesday, and happened in the middle of the day instead of the beginning. Other changes included piloting the flex schedule for the entire week, instead of just Monday and Tuesday. The process by which students sign up for a teacher’s classroom during flex was also modified. Students then had the advantage to be able to log back in and change their flex signups themselves. Finally, AM was also moved to earlier to 7 a.m. rather than 7:12 a.m. in order to make the length of AM classes similar to the length of the other periods. After the trial run, feedback will continue to be collected from students and staff, with the goal of voting conclusively on the flex schedule near the end of May. If there is a ⅔ majority vote in favor of the flex schedule, it will be permanently adopted in the 2019-20 school year. Furthermore, if this trial run is not sufficient, another one may be conducted before the May vote. Sarah Lipetz played a crucial role in formating the schedule to make it work for the Samo community, and is very excited for all the possibilities that fully implementing the flex schedule could bring. “Teachers are really excited to be able to offer this time to their students. I think it would be a really positive change for the school, since we haven’t had a change in bell schedule for many, many, many years,” Lipetz said.