After one semester of a new bell schedule at Benicia High School, Principal Brianna Kleinschmidt delivered a presentation on how the schedule was going and potential next steps for modification at Thursday’s school board meeting.

In 2015, BHS formed a Schedule Advisory Committee made up of parents, students, teachers and administrators to discuss a possible new schedule to replace the traditional six-period day. After numerous recommendations and adjustments, a new schedule was announced in May and implemented at the start of the 2017-18 school year. This new schedule consists of three traditional days and two block days made up of 86-minute classes plus a new Access period to give students time to do homework, meet with teachers, work on assignments or attend workshops or guest speeches.

“It was a huge change for us,” Kleinschmidt said.

The principal said staff was trying to gather as much feedback as possible, including through a survey delivered this week, which Kleinschmidt said had already gotten 411 responses from parents, students and teachers, the most of any survey administered since she had started working at Benicia High.

Kleinschmidt said when the Schedule Advisory Committee first started meeting, a number of priorities were set.

“Out of those priorities, while we were ultimately not able to implement the schedule that they recommended, we were still able to distill those priorities and do our best to incorporate as many of those as possible in the processes we continued last year with another committee (the Schedule Implementation Committee) and probably 10 different versions of a schedule,” she said. “We finally came to what we have this year.”

Kleinschmidt said a goal was always to continue to have a conversation with the community and figure out how to make adjustments moving forward.

In the first week of the school year, Kleinschmidt noted that everybody acclimated to the schedule very well, particularly for the students. She also felt the block days seemed “slower.”

“There’s a little bit more of a relaxed energy, which I think is a good thing,” she said. “We’re able to dive in a little bit deeper to what we’re doing on those days, and then we finish up on Fridays and it’s back to that six-period day and then it’s the weekend.”

One discussion Kleinschmidt said staff were continually having was over how to teach on a block day. She said this was an opportunity for educations to continue to focus on project-based learning, deeper levels of engagement, increased teacher collaboration and additional instructional opportunities.

Another question explored was whether or not Access period was an effective use of time. In the survey, 78 percent felt Access had a positive impact on students and 76 percent did not want to return to a schedule without an Access period.

“We’re currently diving into our first-semester grades to compare those to past years and looking at ‘Is it making an effect on student achievement?’” Kleinschmidt said. “Anecdotally, I’ve had teachers come to me and say, ‘I have more homework being turned in than ever before’ because they have that time to work on it or they have a teacher to go to.”

However, Kleinschmidt said data would be more useful in judging the effectiveness of Access than anecdotes, and planned to return with more data.

One of the priorities frequently discussed by the Schedule Advisory Committee that was not included in the final schedule was a later start time. Kleinschmidt said this would continue to be explored but noted that a later start time would impact other site schools as well.

Kleinschmidt then brought up students Alex Torres and Lauren Calica to give their thoughts on the schedule. Both liked it, although Calica suggested the passing periods be six minutes instead of eight. Torres also liked the idea of a later start time provided it did not mean a later end time.

Math teacher Chris Guinon said he gave out a survey at the start of the semester to his calculus and pre-calculus students on their thoughts on the schedule. He said 6 percent of respondents hated it while 94 percent liked it in some form.

“It’s been real positive,” he said. “That’s 150 kids, but they wanted to be heard and I wanted to hear them.”

Social science teacher Stacy Starkweather, who previously served on the Schedule Advisory Committee, was pleased with the block days because they allowed opportunities for a variety of activities in one period or a sharp focus on one subject. One of the committee’s goals was for a later start time, and Starkweather did an informal poll with his students and found that most favored a later start time. They also indicated that some of the extra passing period minutes could be incorporated into other parts of the schedule so that students would only be getting out slightly later instead of much later.

“I told the students who didn’t want a later start time that I would let their voice be heard,” Starkweather said. “The two main things were primarily fall sports— they didn’t wanna play in the dark— and those that said ‘It doesn’t matter. I’m just gonna stay up later or I get up at 5:30 anyway. What does it matter to me?’”

Parent Paula Schnese expressed support for a later start time and felt that a question about it should be included in the next survey to provide data. She felt that since many students do not use email, having them fill out a survey during Access period would be more efficient.

“If you had everybody in the school (fill out the survey), I think your data would be a little bit more accurate,” she said.

Kleinschmidt said next steps included a three-year pilot with a Memorandum of Understanding allowing adjustments prior to a May 1 vote, beginning focus group meetings to discuss possible changes to the schedule for next year and continuing to study how best to utilize Access period.

In other matters, the board unanimously voted to approve a set of new or realigned courses at Benicia High, and Starkweather’s Advanced Placement Psychology students presented a video assignment featuring popular songs rewritten to discuss the parts of the brain.

The board will next meet Thursday, Feb. 1.