Editorial: too soon for 2017-18 class selection
Last week students who have been in Frisco ISD since middle school got their course card from the four-year plan made in eighth grade. The moment students were told how to change courses on the card, many underclassmen across campus because crossing out and writing in different classes. While there is the need for the school to get started on this process as soon as possible, this should be done at a later date.
To begin with the district has revealed dual-credit class options available for juniors starting next year with an informational meeting taking place Wednesday night. However, course cards are due for all students in their social studies classes on Wednesday or Thursday. This presents a problem for many rising juniors and seniors who have their history class on Wednesday.
Some students are fortunate in that they can attend the meeting on Wednesday night and still have time to change their course card to dual-credit classes by Thursday if that seems like a good option. But even twelve hours may not be enough time for many students to have to decide whether or not to change their schedule and add dual-credit.
Another problem with the early due date of course cards, many electives that require applications for next year have not released those applications yet. This means students are being asked to sign up for classes they may not get into. Yes students can change electives until April 13, but this defeats the purpose of planning out electives if a student has no possible way of knowing whether or not they will even make it into the program.
The need for the counseling office and counselors to get started on the process of making schedules for more than 2,000 students while continuing to take care of the needs of students and staff across campus is well understood and appreciated. It’s also understood, that depending on class requests, the school may have to hire new teachers or require others to teach new classes, but the early course card due date hinders students ability to effectively plan out their schedule.
Perhaps if all application based classes and the course planning for the next year happened on the same timeline, then there wouldn’t be an issue, but until that happens either the course cards should be due later, or application based classes need to make their applications available sooner. Until that happens, what a student puts down now may be completely different than what they actually take in the fall.
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