With the beginning of semester two, students at Park have had to deal with issues surrounding their schedule. An increased number of students this semester have decided to change their schedule due to a variety of factors.
According to Principal LaNisha Paddock, schedule changes are dealt with by the counselor for each grade level.
“There is a very clearly articulated process that is run by our counselors, they do a lot of the schedule changes,” Paddock said. “Obviously, just like every other school, there are going to be scheduling conflicts. Sometimes there might be holes in schedules, or whatever else that just naturally happens.”
Junior Counselor, Heidi Cosgrove, has had an increased number of students requesting a schedule change this semester. She mentions numerous reasons that caused this to happen.
“There’s the traditional schedule changes where it’s a wrong course or level change that needs to happen,” Cosgrove said. “There’s (also) a component where when students do their registration thinking they might be interested in a class in February and then 7 months later they have different interests. We also have students that they just put anything down for registration and we know that students are trying to maneuver their schedules so they can be with friends or have open hours.”
Junior Ailish Fitzpatrick said one thing that made this semester confusing for her were the study halls. On her powerschool schedule it said “TBD” like it had for many other students at Park.
“My study hall was in the gym so that was really annoying,” Fitzpatrick said. “Putting where we were going for study hall into powerschool (would have been helpful) because it just said “TBD” for the room you were in.”
According to Cosgrove, “to be determined” or wrong room numbers for study hall this semester is partly due to the increase of students taking a study hall. As the study hall class sizes grow, so does the number of teachers needed to run them, causing confusion and issues.
“I’ve heard that the study halls had odd room numbers. I even saw where a study hall had TBD,” said Cosgrove. “I think admin is trying to fix this. The study halls are getting bigger so they’re having fewer study halls so that teachers can be more available.”
Fitzpatrick said she hopes to see more availability in the Library Media Center to students at Park.
“I hope that they can keep the LMC open more often,” Fitzpatrick said. “I always go there and it’s locked.”
Cosgrove said many students are adjusting smoothly to the second semester. The recent warm and sunny weather has seemed to encourage students to work through school and breathe in this new and final semester.
“I always think it’s an easier adjustment than the beginning of the school year,” Cosgrove said. “I also think there’s kind of this little bit of spring that’s in the air which is kind of helpful, there’s a breath of fresh air. I hope that students feel like it’s a nice fresh start and they can breathe a little bit.”
