Hear from eight of your colleagues across the state on what their biggest challenges are in building the master schedule for the 2021-22 school year and what their district is offering this summer in terms of credit recovery for students. 

Bay City Central High School

Assistant Principal: Jennifer Thunberg, MASSP Board of - AP Central Rep

Number of Students: 1,100

What are your biggest challenges in building the master schedule for the 2021-22 school year? 

Offering enough electives for the students who are ahead of the game while accommodating the students who have fallen behind during the pandemic in our core classes.

What is your district offering this summer in terms of credit recovery for your students? 

We will have our normal summer school situation for students who are retaking classes they have failed. We have teachers from our staff that run these classes in the summer.  We are currently offering an after school ‘credit protection’ program for students who were at a 40% or above in a class during our first semester. Students have the opportunity to go back and hit the standards that they missed in order to earn credit for the class now. We have 7 teachers who are assisting with this program and who are assigned a group of students to identify the standards that they need to hit in order to earn the credit for the class.

Cass Tech High School

Assistant Principal: Lauren Kazin

Number of Students: 2,450

What are your biggest challenges in building the master schedule for the 2021-22 school year? 

Our biggest challenge in building our master schedule is definitely the unknown. Without knowing what options will be available to students, families, and teachers as well as what decisions they have made - whether to return to school face to face or to learn virtually -  it’s difficult to create a schedule that will support those choices. We will create our schedule much like we have in the past but are prepared to make changes as more information becomes available. 

What is your district offering this summer in terms of credit recovery for your students? 

Our district utilizes Edgenuity for credit recovery courses throughout the summer. Students are also able to recover courses through Michigan Virtual, Keystone or other pre-approved online programs. 

Groves High School 

Assistant Principal: Othamian Peterson, MASSP Board of Directors - AP East Rep

Number of Students:1,250

What are your biggest challenges in building the master schedule for the 2021-22 school year?  

We have a number of challenges.  The biggest challenge will be the instructional delivery model(s) that we will be using for the school year.  Currently, we are delivering hybrid instruction (virtual and in-person)  but it is not the best model for either student.  How do we create a schedule that takes into account the educational needs of students at home and the students who will not be appearing in-person.  We also had a number of students who were disengaged during the pandemic.  We are looking at structuring interventions courses and remediation.  Lastly, we lost families to private schools.  Although federal funds will buffer the loss for next year, we will have to account for decreased enrollment and possibly make cuts to our course offerings.

What is your district offering this summer in terms of credit recovery for your students? 

We just had a meeting yesterday . Right now, the district will offer traditional summer school with some spots for credit recovery at the secondary level.  They are exploring options for interventions in the fall and beyond because there is a strong trepidation about students taking advantage of academic support in the summer. As for our elementary, they are going to be offering literacy support.  

Lake Orion High School

Assistant Principal: Kyle Meteyer

Number of Students: 2,300

What are your biggest challenges in building the master schedule for the 2021-22 school year? 

Students needing course credit recovery, uncertainty in overall enrollment and enrollment in our virtual school.

What is your district offering this summer in terms of credit recovery for your students? 

We are expanding our offerings, but specifics have not yet been finalized.

Ludington High School 

Assistant Principal: Steve Forsberg, MASSP Board of Directors - AP West Rep

Number of Students: 700

What are your biggest challenges in building the master schedule for the 2021-22 school year? 

Our biggest challenges are hedging between what we hope the 2021-22 school year will look like (more in person instruction with less restrictions) and what we fear it may still need to look like (similar to this year). This has pushed us to try to figure out what a sustainable model for allowing students to learn remotely might be. Our staff has worked very hard to provide high quality opportunities for remote learning this year, but it has stretched them and not many students have found success in that format. In the end, we are going to plan and schedule for the best case scenario, while also building some contingencies for the worst. 

What is your district offering this summer in terms of credit recovery for your students?

At LHS, we plan to offer two different summer programs to help students rekindle a love of learning and recover some lost credits towards graduation. We find ourselves faced with a unique problem and opportunity. Never before have we seen this many students struggle academically in one given year, but also never before have we had the funding and will to address this problem with an equally big and bold response. 

Our first summer program is a three week long Academic Academy experience focused mainly on rekindling a love of learning in students coming off this school year. Staff will create experiential learning opportunities spanning three weeks in June. Students will attend a morning or an afternoon session. Each session will have a specific curricular focus, be composed of a set of experiences and tasks, and also carry with it the ability to recover/earn credit. Keys to the success of this program are to give staff the ability to create something unique that they are excited about, to compensate staff well for their time, to offer a unique experience to students, and to allow for credit recovery. Administrators will recruit and promote these programs. We will target students who need credit recovery, but also allow students to attend who want to as an enrichment opportunity. Attending a summer Academic Academy will be a prerequisite for accessing our traditional credit recovery programs. 

Our second program is more of a traditional summer credit recovery program using Edmentum. We will have our Director of Online Learning run this program as we normally do, except it will be offered remotely during July and August. Students will have a longer period of time in which to recover credits and can access as many as they can get through before the start of school. As previously stated, we will require completion of one of our Academic Academies to access this programming. Students with extenuating circumstances barring them from attending an Academic Academy can appeal to administration for acceptance into the traditional summer credit recovery program. Examples of exceptions could be work conflicts, family circumstances, illness/injury, etc. The goal of this second program is to allow students to recover a larger number of classes and hopefully close the credit gap. 

Rochester High School

Assistant Principal: Josh Wrinkle 

Number of Students: 1,670

What are your biggest challenges in building the master schedule for the 2021-22 school year?

The biggest challenge for Rochester High in scheduling for 2021-22 is working with our new Virtual Campus to ensure all students are scheduled in the right location. We have to make sure that students have the ability to make a decision whether to attend the virtual or in-person school based on the best available information. This means that families will likely have until the summer to make, or adjust, their choice. We normally start construction of the schedule in April; this change will assuredly push back our timeline and put us up against the start of the school year.  

What is your district offering this summer in terms of credit recovery for your students?

To my knowledge, our district is offering our normal summer school program starting in June. This program offers in-person instruction, as well as Edgenuity. 

Saline High School

Assistant Principal: Theresa Stager 

Number of Students: 1,750

What are your biggest challenges in building the master schedule for the 2021-22 school year? 

The unknown of which students (and how many) plan to return - who will still want to be virtual vs who will come in-person. Otherwise, our 2021-22 master schedule looks similar to what this year should have been.

What is your district offering this summer in terms of credit recovery for your students?

We have summer school, which offers credit recovery. Our students can take courses through Edgenuity and Michigan Virtual for credit recovery. 

Sparta High School

Assistant Principal: Aaron Romoslawski

Number of Students: 800

What are your biggest challenges in building the master schedule for the 2021-22 school year? 

We will be adding 80 kids to the high school due to class size differences between the graduating Seniors and incoming Freshmen. We are also working to balance our virtual offerings with our F2F offerings through Michigan Virtual and Edgenuity. In response to student surveys, we will be adding a 7th hour elective block to give more students elective choices and an optional study hall during the day. This block will also serve as a credit recovery period for students needing more opportunities to get back on track to graduate.

What is your district offering this summer in terms of credit recovery for your students? 

We will be hosting two three week sessions for summer school in June and August. These will run 4 days a week with different subject area experts on site each day along with a dedicated tutor for students needing additional support. We are working on signing staff up for a tutoring program for students identified as at-risk to provide additional scaffolding in preparation for their schedule in the fall. In addition to credit recovery, we will be offering extension opportunities hosted by staff for deep dives into topics ranging from reading lit, cell phone photography, powerlifting and greek mythology.