“Challenging” is how many staff members are describing the adjustments that schedule changes are forcing upon Cleveland and other Portland Public Schools.

    This year, all the schools in the district switched from a seven period day to an eight period block schedule.  PPS is one of the last local districts to make this change, and it is being received with a wide spectrum of opinions.

    The new schedule saves the district money, because it allows them to hire fewer teachers for the same amount of students.  Yet it also has many consequences, such as lost class time, long gaps between language and math classes, and, of course, lost jobs.

    Teachers are now covering six out of eight classes instead of five of seven, which means they are seeing approximately 30 kids more than usual.  Fewer educators are needed to cover all the classes.  For Cleveland, this means we lost around ten percent of our teachers, a staggering number.

    “Now we’ve ended up in an imperfect situation, that’s for sure,” said Jan Watt, special projects coordinator, about the changes.

    According to Mike Vogel, a Cleveland economics teacher, the district is saving about four million dollars on the six of eight system.  Still, when he took a vote within the Cleveland teachers, 71 percent said that they would keep the five of seven if PPS gave them a choice like it was supposed to.

    “Will the schedule stay the same,” asked Vogel, “…or will it change?”

    The teachers’ union filed a lawsuit over the new schedule, on the grounds that PPS broke the contract that said teachers would have a say in whether the changes went through or not.  Whatever the meetings decide will be final, because the lawsuit has gone into arbitration.  If the union wins the lawsuit, it could mean a switch back to the old schedule or compensation for the teachers.  This switch could potentially happen at the semester break, although most people hope they will wait until the end of the year.

    “Whether they would change it midyear, there’s conflicting stories,” said Principal Paul Cook.  He commented that “changing midyear would be very challenging for everyone.”

    The first arbitration meeting is scheduled on Oct. 1, but it could take a while for an actual decision to be reached.

    Cleveland faculty members have different viewpoints about the teaching value of a block schedule.  Much of their outlook is defined by the demands of their specific department.  Robert Schlicting, a physics teacher, said that, although he liked last year better, he also thinks the blocks work well.  The block days give him more time for labs, and he is able to split up the days into the equivalent of two instruction days last year.

    Judy Champion is a basic skills teacher who works with special education students.  She adopted a very different opinion, explaining that the long gaps between seeing her kids requires her to spend nearly 20 minutes a class doing review.

    “We try to add ideas that get them up and moving,” said Champion.  She feels that basic skills need to be taught on a daily basis, and the long classes make focus harder.

Language teachers also agreed that they need to see students every day, in order to “learn one skill one day, practice the next.”

    Cleveland has to adjust on multiple levels to the new schedule.  Besides the lost jobs and longer class periods, there are the new study halls, as well as many more students running around the school during free periods.  The study halls have been described as “holding pens,” and, although Cleveland’s are anywhere from 50 to over 100, some PPS schools have as many as 200 students in the cafeteria at once.  There are many students who are unhappy, and feel that they can’t work in that environment.

    “I think that there’s a lot more kids who would rather not be here,” said Da’anyel McKelvey, one of the two campus monitors supervising study hall.  He thought that there were students who used the time well, but they were in the minority.

    Some students are happy with the overall changes, though.  Freshman Gabby Dewson thinks that staying in classes longer and having less switching around can make the transition to high school a little bit easier.

    “So far, it seems pretty great,” said Dewson. “It can get boring,” she added.  Especially in classes like PE, she said it could become too slow at times, but for the most part, she likes the system.

    The free periods and late starts created confusion on exactly when students are allowed to be in school.  Technically, kids on their free periods shouldn’t be on school grounds unless they are in a designated area with supervision.  This also applies to the Thursday late starts, but it can be very difficult to enforce the rules.

    “We’ve never had this many kids getting off this early,” said McKelvey.  “We don’t know what kind of ripple effect that will have out on the community.”  There haven’t been any bad incidents yet, but both McKelvey and Kim Anderson, the other campus monitor, knocked on wood.