Two years ago, Gorham High School (GHS) changed its bell schedule from a seven-period hybrid schedule to an eight-period alternating block schedule. The impetus for the change was a key recommendation by our accrediting organization, the New England Association of Schools and Colleges, which, after its decennial visit in 2014, recommended GHS create a schedule that provides common planning time for teachers to work on curriculum, instruction, and assessment.

At the same time, GHS was looking for ways to revitalize the Advisory program and to provide time during the week for students to get extra help.

Over the past two years, GHS has been collecting student achievement and survey data to evaluate whether the change has been good for the school. Overall, there have been many positives including: the addition of the intervention and enrichment period known as Auxilium has provided opportunities for students to get extra help during the day; and the addition of the 8th period has provided teachers with a common planning time to work on curriculum, instruction, and assessment.

There has been one significant negative, however, that needed to be addressed. The move to the new bell schedule two years ago resulted in a significant loss of class time that resulted in most teachers reducing their curriculum by two full units (e.g. the 9th grade science teachers needed to cut Space out of the Earth Space Science course because they didn’t have time for it in the new schedule).

Compared to area high schools, GHS went from having the second most amount of class time to having one of the least amount of class time (as can be seen in the data above). The previous schedule provided 464 minutes of class time every two weeks while the current schedule provides only 350 minutes.

The feedback from our teachers has been clear: increase class time and find a way to ensure that each class meets three times per week, and preserve but reduce intervention time. After analyzing many other bell schedules from around Maine and beyond, the GHS Leadership Team voted unanimously to adopt a new bell schedule this year, which has been adapted from the Falmouth High School schedule.

Pros associated with the new schedule include: a consistent weekly schedule for outside speakers, meetings, IEPs, college representatives, and class meetings that won’t be disrupted by snow days, etc.; an increase in class time by nearly 30 minutes over two weeks, which equates to eight full classes a year; all classes meet three times per week; class lengths are between 54 and 77 minutes (not too short, not too long); shortens Monday’s scheduling day to 21 minutes, which was requested by teachers; adds a short Advisory period on Tuesday, which has been lost in the current schedule; preserves Auxilium but reduces it to the staff consensus of two days per week; preserves common planning time; leaves P4 and P8 open for outside opportunities like internships and co-op, and enhances access to USM courses by aligning P4 and P8 with their schedule; and reduces scheduling conflicts for CTE and adds more academic time for CTE.

While the new schedule looks confusing at first, and afternoon CTE loses some Auxilium on Wednesdays when there is an Early Release, there is wide consensus among the GHS staff, and even some excitement, that this schedule will be better for learning.