New Class Structure Tossed, Parsippany Middle School Schedules Expected in October

The ongoing schedule saga for more than 1,000 students across Parsippany’s two middle schools has an end in sight, but it won’t be in September.

Acting Superintendent Dr. Nancy Gigante, who stepped in for Superintendent Scott Rixford when he went on a 30-day medical leave earlier this month, released a statement to parents Wednesday explaining the process of the schedule creation and what they see as an end point. The full text of the letter is below.

The schedule saga began just before the district opened its doors during the first week of September. Middle schoolers showed up to class without solidified scheduled for the first three days of school – Sept. 3, 4, and 7 – and were then given paper copies of daily setups.

According to Gigante, the system that creates the schedule, named Genesis, often takes up to five weeks to churn out the middle school schedules. Administrators are hoping for a shorter timetable, which is why Gigante is aiming for “early” October.

Her letter is as follows:

Dear Parents:

As some parents have inquired about the process of creating a new schedule, I would like to offer an outline of some of the major steps involved in doing so. There is more intricate work than these broad-stroke activities may indicate, but I think it would be helpful for parents to hear about what we are doing. First, templates of the schedules to run both buildings need to be created in lengthy Excel documents. Academic tech staff, supervisors, principals, and teachers from the middle schools review these to ensure a firm foundation on which to build the master schedule. These templates are tested repeatedly and the data analyzed with regard to student and teacher teams. These teams are then balanced as much as they can be, understanding that different students have different needs and different academic profiles.

Next, specific students are assigned to teams within their grade levels. As has always been the case at our middle schools, students with special programming needs may be cross-teamed in order to provide the services required. After that, elective courses are placed into the master schedule template to frontload a more successful scheduling process and avoid a high majority of individual student schedule adjustments later, adjustments that are always necessary at the end of any scheduling process. At this point, the Excel document can be uploaded to Genesis. In our unique case this year, where we are building a master schedule while school is in session, we need to use a Genesis test server and not the live Genesis server, since current information needs to be accessible as school continues.

While on the Genesis test server, the schedule is run and analyzed, and academic tech staff, principals, and counselors make adjustments for more successful placements of students. The schedule is then re-run, and that process is repeated until a high percentage of students are scheduled into courses without the need for too many individual adjustments as mentioned above. At that point, supervisors and principals will assign teachers and locations (rooms) to all courses, while counselors make final adjustments to individual student schedules.

One of the final steps is letting our teachers know when the current schedule will end, when the new schedule will begin, and what they will be teaching in the new schedule. The remaining steps then happen “behind the scenes,” as Genesis needs to shut down in order to move the schedule from the test server to the live server on their end, and we need to “test” the new schedule on the live server to ensure that teachers can see student rosters, parents can see student schedules, and administrators can access schedules and monitor attendance. This Genesis shutdown and the ensuing reopening of Genesis will be communicated to staff and parents in as much advance as possible.

We know that historically in our district this process has taken us about five weeks to complete. We had been given a similar estimate of time from Genesis. We are doing our best to complete all of this in much less time. And we are doing all of this for two middle schools. As it stands now, barring any unforeseen circumstances, I feel comfortable in changing my estimate of “sometime in October” to “early October,” specifically. As always, we appreciate the patience of our parents and students with this frustrating situation and I continue to applaud the efforts of our teachers, counselors, administrators, and technicians as we approach this solution as a team, and with all effort to do this as successfully and as quickly as possible.

Thank you,

Nancy Gigante

The schedule mishap came about due to the proposed – and implemented – change to class length, supported by Rixford. The new schedule setup supported longer class periods and less classes, which was tossed aside for the bell schedule formerly used in the district.

In an additional statement, Gigante said:

“I believe that after several years of change, change, change, new, new, new, it is in our district’s best interest to experience some familiarity.

I am therefore recommending a return for this school year to the 9-period, 40 minutes per period schedule that we had last school year and many before that. I am recommending a return to a fiveday-a-week schedule for all classes, including reading and writing at all grade levels, physical education and health, all electives, and lunch. I am recommending that music lessons be scheduled as they always have, in a rotational basis throughout the entire school day. I am recommending that extra support in the areas of language arts and mathematics return to having individual programming provided for students who need it, rather than differentiating the type of schedules different “types” of students get or limiting what electives students in need of extra support are afforded.”

Do you thing Gigante made the right move to return to last year’s schedule structure? Should the district have pushed on with the newly proposed structure, or should that have never been approved? Tell us in the comments.