Overview

Of all the levers a school can pull to ensure it is truly living its mission and supporting its core values, one of the most powerful levers is the deployment and allocation of time. Yet, when we consider the demands of a truly exceptional educational experience—one to which Parker is committed fully—designing a daily schedule becomes one of the most challenging responsibilities of the school. At Parker, we believe that the daily schedule should reflect what we believe to be the core values and essential components of a Parker education. Our schedule must support excellence in academics, arts, and athletics, achieve balance in the student experience, provide opportunities for collaboration among and between students, faculty, and staff, optimize instructional time, and provide appropriate co-curricular time, transition time, and free time. No easy task as time is finite, but one that Parker has invested significant effort and resource into over the past seven years.

Creating the ideal daily schedule is one of the more complex challenges schools face due primarily to the number of competing variables vying for ample time in the day (e.g., instructional time, passing time, advisory time, lunch time, and extra-curricular time, etc.). The mistake we can make in our research and deliberation is to approach the process as though it is a relatively simple algorithm that can be easily solved by adding a few minutes here and shaving a few minutes off there. Instead, in order to design the ideal schedule—one that truly supports our vision of educating the whole child—we must first understand that the final daily schedule is a reflection of those core values.

Moreover, what is often overlooked in the process of designing a daily schedule is that with each potential change to the schedule there will inevitably be a trade-off. For example, a schedule that includes an X period at the end of the day restricted to co-curriculars (athletics, robotics, drama club, etc.) may result in a decrease in the total number of available courses students can take during a given year. Alternatively, a schedule in which every student is afforded the schedule they prefer will likely result in either a longer school day or a reduction in other non-academic program and curriculum. 

This is why Parker has committed to approaching the ongoing work of redesigning the daily schedule by first clearly articulating our core goals and objectives. The final design of the schedule then becomes a reflection of our core values and objectives, including:

Reflect Parker’s Mission and Vision: Parker is committed to graduating students who embody those qualities essential for academic success and personal fulfillment—intellectual curiosity, creative thinking, passion for learning, ethical responsibility, self-reliance, community engagement, and global competence—by offering a balanced, challenging and integrated Junior Kindergarten-Grade 12 educational program in academics, athletics, and the arts, all in a vibrant and diverse school community. To this end, Parker must create a daily schedule whose policies and allocation of time support our vision of “developing students who strive for academic excellence while maintaining social and emotional well-being and balance, and who are able to participate in the fundamental human conversation on what is right, fair, and good by developing the necessary skills, aptitude, and imagination.” In order to achieve this objective, we need to review and, if necessary, refine scheduling policies including, but not limited to, the number of course, programs, activities, and electives students can take.

Honor Healthy Pace of the Day Through Transition Time and Break Time: One of the guiding principles from the 2013 daily schedule research and review was to create passing time. Under the 2013 schedule, students had no passing time between classes and it was determined that passing time was critical to allow students time to gather items and prepare for the next class, to allow faculty time to prepare for the next class, and to provide classes with definite beginning and ending times creating true instructional minutes. According to research, students need an average of 13 minutes to mentally transition from one subject to another (not to mention time to address their physiological needs). In the end, we believe that students need five minutes, at a minimum, to transition between classes, activities, and programs. 

Community Building and Character Development: Core to our mission is a commitment to the development of character, which begins and ends with a focus on student well-being and social and emotional learning. If we are serious about this commitment, then it must be reflected in how we deploy time in the daily schedule through program and curriculum focused on developing the whole student. Thus, time in the daily schedule must be committed to meaningful, substantive programming and curriculum in support of key initiatives including diversity and inclusion, community engagement, character development, advisory, and social and emotional learning.

Professional Collaboration and Learning: Both the 2012 Strategic Plan and the 2017 Strategic Plan call for a daily schedule that prioritizes time dedicated to faculty collaboration and learning. Affording faculty time to work across and between divisions and departments to design, refine, and coordinate instructional strategies, assessment tools, and learning outcomes is essential to sustaining an academic environment that can support every student.

Supporting Whole-Child Education: Parker prides itself on developing and supporting scholars, artists, and athletes. In short, our students are remarkable in that they are able to thrive in and out of the classroom. For the large majority of our students, co-curriculars play a significant role in their Parker educational experience. In order to best accommodate the demands of a Parker education and the desire of our kids to be fully invested in their school, we must offer a daily schedule that fully supports co-curricular activities (e.g., athletics, robotics, drama club, etc.) by potentially including at least a part of those activities in the daily schedule.

Compliance for Accreditation: According to the California Association of Independent Schools (CAIS), the school calendar must specify a minimum of 175 school days per year (which may include, but not be limited to: shortened days; in-service days; parent-teacher conference days). Since 2010, Parker’s annual number of school days has been in excess of the CAIS minimum standard with an average of 182 school days. For the 2019-2020 academic year, the total number of school days will be 187, with 169 of those days being student contact days or instructional days. Also, the total number of hours and minutes of an average school day (Upper School = 7 hours, 20 minutes; Middle School = 6 hours and 50 minutes) are above the CAIS average. Thus, the notion of adding more school days is not under serious consideration at this point.

Optimize Student Sleep Cycle: The research is overwhelmingly in favor of a later start for schools. The general rule of thumb, endorsed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), American Medical Association (AMA), and many other organizations and advocacy groups is that middle school and high school classes should start no earlier than 8:30 am to allow students to get healthy sleep. Unfortunately, most students are not getting sufficient sleep. According to the CDC, in 2017 75.4 percent of high school students get fewer than eight hours of sleep on school nights, and 43 percent get six or fewer hours, an increase from the 2011, 2013, and 2015 surveys. The CDC recommends 9-10 hours of sleep per night for students. Based on the science of their circadian rhythm and natural sleep-wake cycles, most adolescents get their optimal sleep between the hours of 11 pm and 8 am. The potential negative effects of insufficient sleep are many. Researchers at the University of Minnesota and the CDC linked later high school start times to significant decreases in teen illegal substance abuse, depression, and consumption of caffeinated drinks. In the final analysis, an earlier start-time was not a consideration. Thus, the new schedule will include a start time no earlier than 8:30 am. 

We remain steadfast in our commitment to student wellbeing by adopting a start time of 8:30 am and to have a daily schedule that fully aligns with our core values and serves students best. In addition, we will maintain our commitment to building a schedule with an academic day no longer than eight hours, which translates into an academic day that will end no later than 3:30 pm.