Schedule controversy continues

PHOTO: Betsy Hyder was one of the four trustees to vote against the motion to reconsider the schedule decision.

By Shira Kalish,

BlueDevilHUB.com Staff–

During the last three Davis Joint Unified School District board meetings, dozens of students and teachers from both Davis High and DaVinci High stood before the school board to voice their discontent with the board’s decision to drastically change the secondary school bell schedule starting in the 2022-2023 school year. 

At the Feb. 3 board meeting, Trustee Lea Darrah proposed a motion to reconsider the decision, but the other four trustees voted against it. 

Over the course of several months, a committee of educators and other district staff members had been redesigning the school schedule to fit a California law requiring all high schools start the school day no earlier than 8:30 a.m. The high school day currently begins at 8:15 a.m.

The district sent out a survey to teachers, students and parents that included drafts of possible new schedules. Schedule one was similar to the current schedule with two block days per week, modified slightly to fit the new law. Schedule two upped the amount of block days to three per week. A majority of survey respondents voted for schedule one.

The school board approved schedule two on Dec. 16—disregarding the committee’s recommendation and the results of the survey.

On Jan. 18, an email was sent out to students explaining the reasoning behind the school board’s decision. One of the reasons was that “student stress is decreased as a result of fewer seven period days each week.”

However, students argued at the board meetings that the new schedule will only increase student stress since they have difficulty focusing through block periods. 

“You all speak to us of mental health, of how your schedule will benefit us and lower our stress. Why do you not listen to us when we tell you that the opposite is true? This district has appalling rates of depression and anxiety … And I find it disheartening, frankly, that the primary solution appears to be changing the schedule to one that the student body agrees will only increase stress,” junior Anna Kelly said at the Feb. 3 board meeting.

Students are not the only ones who are concerned that the new schedule will harm their mental health. DaVinci High math teacher Elizabeth Broughton said at the Jan. 20 board meeting that such a radical change to the schedule will be stressful and labor intensive for teachers. 

“Adopting schedule two requires a fifth pivot in instructional practice since March 2020,” Broughton said. She said that such a drastic change forces teachers to create a “full-scale revision of all of our lessons and labs, semester plans, and course maps.”

“Is the district prepared to compensate us for working through the summer of 2022? Asking teachers to give up significant personal time to rewrite their curriculum … demonstrates a serious misunderstanding of our current workload and teacher morale,” Broughton said.

Trustee Betsy Hyder said at the Feb. 3 board meeting that since DJUSD has never tried a three-block schedule, the problems that students and teachers anticipate are “hypothetical.” She does not believe that she has seen sufficient evidence to convince her to change her decision. 

“I just can’t at this point see why I would be persuaded to change that proposal based on what hypothetically … would be too difficult,” Hyder said. “Our planet is scorched, our firefighters can’t say it’s too hard. Our healthcare workers can’t say it’s too hard.”

Kelly spoke against the expectation that students and staff should be ready to handle any changes that are thrown their way.

“You call us resilient, strong, and ready to handle whatever challenges you make us face. I am confident in saying we are only resilient because you leave us no other option … We do not want to be resilient. We want to be happy,” Kelly said in her comments before the board.