<p>At our high schools, kids choose from the course catalog in the fall for the next year’s classes. Then in January they may get called to the office if classes they chose will not be offered do to low interest. Three days before school is out in June, many get called back to the office because their schedules don’t work and they have to choose different classes. At this point many classes are full and due to classes not being offered, the remaining selection is abysmal. There is added stress since this typically happens to kids one or two days before final exams. Should the course offerings and class schedules be nailed down sooner than 2 days before school is out? I’m curious to know what the process is like for others. (Clearly I have a rant that I’m trying to contain. 
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<p>That sounds very stressful. Here’s how ours works:
Meet with counselor in February and tell GC what you want to take
Schedule is turned in by March 1 - you’ll get every class you want at this point
Changes until May 1st - you can make changes as long as there are openings in the class you want to add
After May 1st, you can’t make any changes. And you can’t change during the school year - for instance if you’re in honors or AP and it’s too hard, you can’t change out.</p>
<p>Ours plan all four years in spring of 8th grade. Each spring they have a two week window to review and make any adjustments (to all the remaining years). Parents and GCs sign off on the plan each spring. Schedules are posted sometime during the summer. It’s all done on-line. Each trimester there is an add/drop period TBD space availability which requires an actual trip by the student to the office. Seems to work quite well and the kids are used to looking ahead at a long range plan. At our school some of the more esoteric classes only meet in odd years or even years so the kids do need to plan and think farther ahead than the next trimester or even the next year. In general I would say my kids were well prepared for navigating and planning college courses. This is a small public high school.</p>
<p>Our kids get finalized schedules about two weeks before classes start. Only, my kid is in band and this is during out-of-town band camp, so he gets his about one week before classes start during what the band camp literature calls a “special registration period.” When I point out that it coincides with “late registration,” I get dirty looks from the booster officers. </p>
<p>I don’t say too much, though, because we have one GC per grade of about 500 kids. It could be worse.</p>
<p>Student/GC discussions begin in Feb.
Paperwork submitted in March.
Schedule conflicts resolved in April/May. As soon as everything is resolved, the schedule is done and final.</p>
<p>The only reason a child is allowed to make a schedule change over the summer is to add rigor or fulfill a graduation requirement. It is very difficult (almost impossible) to get a schedule changed just because a student changed his or her mind.</p>
<p>At our local high school, you don’t find out your schedule until you register in the fall. Then there is a place for a line to see the counselers to make changes and accomodations. It’s messy.</p>
<p>My daughter’s school is for juniors and seniors only. Incoming juniors get to express their preferences for science classes, math (subject to placement), and a foreign language. Pretty much everything else is determined by placement tests or your transcript.</p>
<p>Everyone discovers their schedule the day before classes start.</p>
<p>Spring semester course requests come out near the beginning of the 3rd six weeks of the fall. However, once again you don’t find out your actual schedule until the night before classes start.</p>
<p>At the end of your junior year, you’re given a planning sheet with all the classes proposed for the next year. You can fill in one or both semesters. The course selection sheets came out May 3 this year and were due May 13. No one finds out their schedule until the day before classes begin, though.</p>
<p>Even those seniors who completed the sheet for 2 senior semesters will have to re-confirm it in the fall at the beginning of the 3rd six weeks.</p>
<p>Changes are allowed with no hard cutoff, but the student has to go to the VP of Academic Affairs and explain why he/she wants the change. The VP can approve the change or not.</p>
<p>About a week before school starts if they go in person and turn all the required forms</p>
<p>Sent from my DROID2 GLOBAL using CC App</p>
<p>Same as ellemenope.</p>
<p>Register in Feb. Can change til beginning of June; after that, changes are allowed only in case of conflicts or failing a course. GCs will call with schedule conflicts in mid-August and offer cr*ppy alternatives. Kids actually get their schedules on the first day of class.</p>
<p>Well, a student selects his or her classes for the next year in January or February, but doesn’t know if he got into them all until school starts in the fall. Changes are only supposed to be made if a student needs to repeat a failed course or took summer school, but it really depends on who a student’s advisor is. D2 had an advisor who would make changes. D2 requested art, but no amount of juggling could get d2 into the class. Her advisor let her sign up for culinary arts instead.</p>
<p>Register in March. Schedules are mailed out about ten days before school starts in Aug.
Then there is typically a mile long line at the GC office for kids needing to make schedule changes. Most of the time it’s due to them getting a class on their schedule that they didn’t even register for or not getting a class they needed to graduate.
It’s a huge public h.s. with a skeleton crew of GC’s.</p>
<p>Same as ellemenope and skyhook. And the kids who have the most scheduling problems are the IB and AP students because often the school only has one section of a class and it conflicts with another class they need/want to take that only has one section.</p>
<p>Schedule is requested in the spring and delivered at registration, with lines out the door for the guidance office. Next fall may be easier, since the school took the extra step of determining that more than one AP section will be necessary for some classes, so the office manually started to schedule for the AP-level seniors rather than let a computer assign classes and sections. There will be fewer surprises for he college-bound seniors, and all juniors were manually placed in the classes required for graduation. </p>
<p>Still, I am still planning a trip to the guidance office this fall. I have had to go in with DS every year.</p>
<p>It seemed like every year about a week before school started we’d get a call from the counselor saying she couldn’t get the proposed schedule to work. Then my kids would go in and play with their computers till they got something they could live with.</p>
<p>Well, I think we’re lucky after reading this. Schedule requests are given in in March-- it’s all fed into a computer and there’s an immense effort made to provide enough sections of every class. Next year for instance there will be two sections of AP Art History because there’s a lot of demand. The last day of school before finals in June is “Step-up day”-- students get their schedules and have 15 minute classes in each course so they can get their summer homework, meet classmates etc. On this day, all kinds of mistakes and changes are discovered, and GC’s do everything they can to make things work, though the master schedule for the school is already set. Still kids switch sections, change classes, etc., through the first two weeks of school in the fall. As long as requirements are met, the first priority is for kids to get the classes they want-- and this pays off, at least for most. Kids take ownership of their education more, I think. And I don’t know whether its really much harder on the GC’s-- it helps their relation with the kids.</p>
<p>Our GC mentioned that 5 years ago and prior, courses would be offered with as little as 8 kids signing up for them. Two years ago they upped it to 15, then for next year it is up to 20. This has caused quite a few offerings in the course catalog to be cancelled. Meanwhile, the AP classes (often one section) are offered during the same periods which is what messed up D’s schedule. Then the alternatives she chose (more than one) weren’t offered either. What a pain - and a shame, going into senior year.</p>
<p>Both of my kids always had scheduling problems because they were both in the band group that met at a certain period, had AP physical science classes (which often don’t have multiple sections), and took upper level German (which had much fewer sections than Spanish). </p>
<p>The administration, German teacher and Physics AP teacher were very accommodating–kids would physically be in the lower division classes and work alone (or with others who were in the same boat) under the teacher’s supervision. The physics teacher taught using powerpoint, so the kids would go through the powerpoint presentations and the teacher would be available for questions.</p>
<p>Not optimal, but it worked.</p>
<p>for my school: in feb-marchish the guidance couselors start scheduling meetings for us to make our schedule, then by a certain our approved(signed by our parents) schedules are due back. Then sometime in mayish-june we get a printed up copy of what we’re schedule to take next year. Then in August we get our actual scheduled mailed to us(the teachers/periods we have the classes) and if you decided that you want to drop a class or change ur schedule in some way. we can schedule meetings in late august to change them before school starts</p>
<p>Wow, we don’t get our schedules until the first day of school. I’m about to be a senior, and I’ve had a schedule conflict the past three years. Only in my freshman year did the counselor bother to ask me for my input about what to change to make it work. The other two years, she just put some random class down, thus I had to spend the first week of school in a random class trying to get everything fixed. </p>
<p>Every year, the first day of school is utter chaos for the counselors. Somehow they manage to actually leave blanks in kid’s schedules. As in, just forget to put in a 2nd period. So because they have to fix all their stupid errors for several days, it is even harder to try to fix the random class you get put in if you had a schedule conflict.</p>
<p>It’s a god awful system.</p>