Back-to-school season for students comes with new stationary, friendship reunions, and a familiar excitement of being back at Lexington High School. But for LHS counselors, preparation for the new school year starts long before the front doors open. From March of the previous school year until the end of September, they continue the tiring process of creating, finalizing, and fixing over 2,000 student schedules.
Formally, the process begins with academic advising and student course selections in March. The number of students who want to take a particular course and the number of teachers who are available to teach it are counted. “That’s how we decide how many sections of each course we need,” Nathan Wilcox, a counselor at LHS, explained.
From there, Kevin Kelly, the head of the mathematics department and the main scheduler at LHS, creates the rough drafts for all the students’ schedules. All throughout the summer after that, counselors go through every single one of their students’ schedules to ensure that the required courses are present and no mistakes have been made.
In August, the schedules become live for all LHS students to see. That’s when the first round of changes begins. “After schedules go to students, we do priority one schedule changes,” Wilcox said. “Those are the ones where students are missing a graduation requirement, missing a special education service or something that they have to have.”
The start of the school year brings the second round of changes during the two-week “Add-Drop” period. This year, instead of hosting the traditional “Arena Day” to document schedule requests, the school used a Google Form system. Arena Day was a day-long event where students lined up in the gymnasium to personally speak to their counselors about schedule changes. “It was pretty busy and pretty chaotic, and we didn’t find it to be super efficient,” Wilcox said.
Many students, however, disagree with this new system.
“I feel like we should’ve had arena day. I think the Google Form is just harder, because it’s easier to just talk to your counselor in person instead of emailing back and forth,” Saadhana Vijay, a junior at LHS, said.
Students from other grades seem to agree. “Arena day is definitely better because although it’s more stressful, at least it’s only one day, so the process is more contained,” Elizabeth Yan, a senior at LHS, remarked.
Regardless of student opinions on the system, one thing is clear: scheduling at LHS is an intricate process that extends far beyond what most people see. Behind every finalized schedule is months of planning and careful consideration of each student’s strengths, weaknesses, and what they can realistically handle.
“It’s really just about knowing who the student is, understanding what you think they can handle, and making sure they have a good work–life balance,” Wilcox said.
