Classes may become longer for HS students

Copyright © 2009
Gallup Independent
By Bill Donovan
Staff writer

GALLUP — The days when public high school students take six classes a day may soon be over.

Ray Arsenault, superintendent for the Gallup-McKinley County School District, said Thursday he’s looking at converting to a “block” schedule in the 2010 and 2011 school year at all of the county high schools.

Under this system, which is in use by many school districts in the state, students would take four classes of 90 minutes each from Monday through Thursday. Classes are currently about 70 minutes long.

This will allow for a total of eight different courses since the students would take the same four courses on Monday and Wednesday and take four different courses on Tuesday and Thursday. On Friday, all eight courses would be taught but the classes will only last 45 minutes each.

While it would be possible to implement the change in the next school year, Arsenault said he wanted to wait until the following year so that the high school principals would have more time to discuss the proposed changes.

The decision to postpone the implementation of the program for discussion may have been a reaction to statements by school officials in the past that one of the reasons so many programs came under fire during the Karen White administration was that programs were developed in the central office and then implemented without getting input from officials and teachers at the schools that would be affected.