For the 2024-25 school year, secondary school students at Warsaw Community Schools will be moving to a seven-period schedule.
Superintendent Dr. David Hoffert said the secondary schools are currently on a modified block schedule, which means students are on a seven-period day three days a week and on a modified block two days a week.
Tracy Horrell, assistant superintendent of secondary education, told the Warsaw School Board Monday that the WCS administration and the Warsaw Community Education Association came to evaluate the modified block versus the seven-period block schedule after an interest in doing so was shown in spring 2023.
Questionnaires were put out to teachers and students in December. Horrell said 70% of participants wanted a change in the schedule, compared to 30% who didn’t.
Focus groups of teachers, administrators and students were done in February and March.
Horrell said they heard information that on block days, schools have more discipline and attendance issues.
Some of the feedback received from the questionnaires and focus groups included the want of a consistent schedule.
“The teachers wanted to be with their kids. They wanted to have them on a regular basis. They wanted to keep the instruction time consistent, which also transpired over to the students. They wanted to be engaged in class. And depending on the group of students I talked to, Lakeview had a different group of students but they wanted to add a new double block of math, they loved math so much. That was not the norm. But what we did find with the students was that it basically depended on the student’s schedule and the teacher whether they liked how the schedule went,” he said, noting the students also gave feedback of wanting consistency in their instruction.
Horrell said it was recommended WCS go to the seven-period block for several reasons, including the schedule provides consistency for students and teachers, students have consistent exposure to content and instruction, the schedule is conducive to schools to collaborate with the Warsaw Area Career Center and clearer communication with community partners who may have student interns or workers during a certain part of the school day.
Earlier in the meeting, the board heard a presentation from The Bowen Center.
Ted Westerhof, business development manager with The Bowen Center, said Bowen works with just under 50 school districts in the state.
This is the 23rd year in the student assistance program. He said every student at WCS has prepaid sessions at Bowen, starting at HeadStart “all the way through the senior year.”
Three or four years after the student assistance program started, Bowen started the employee assistance program for WCS employees.
“And not just their employees, but their children, their spouses, true holistic employee assistance programming,” Westerhof said. “And it’s been awesome coordinating both of those programs.”
In 2007, Bowen started with skills coaching when its funding allowed Bowen to approach schools and tell them Bowen teaches life skills.
“We love something called early intervention. Much better to heal a child than try to fix a broken adult. That’s a common statement we say, but we will do both,” Westerhof said. WCS was one of the first school systems “to step up and allow that.”
Bowen is also a big part of teaching WCS staff about suicide prevention. Westerhof said students don’t always reach out to adults, but if they can train students in an organized way to reach out to each other, “that’s an amazing thing we’ve seen in districts.”
Bowen is transitioning now to provide primary care and mental health under the same roof.
“I mean, you don’t have to talk awkwardly to your doctor if you think mental health might play in what’s going on with your physical issues. We’re screening for it and asking for it. We’re not waiting for you to bring it up,” Westerhof said. “We do that primarily under a federal program to serve the underserved, these individual and families who have all kinds of stressors and poor access to even transportation. They attempt to use the ER as primary care, which we know we do not do follow-up meeting with your ER doctor.”
Bowen is working with nursing staff with the programming.
Another way Bowen is working with WCS is virtual counseling done in school, which is a resource that could be used for families who need it.