Starting in 2025-2026, the school district made the executive decision to cut down almost every teachers’ classes from six to five in order to give each of them an additional plan period called professional plan.

Last spring, Superintendent Jeanice Kerr Swift began collecting feedback from teachers about things they’re unhappy with. Principal Amy McAnarney said Swift realized teachers wanted more time during their school day to work, so she came to the district’s high schools to request the schools edit their schedules to make room for every teacher to have another plan period.

“[Swift] did a lot of talking with teachers and administrators and community members, and that was one thing that came out of that:they felt like teachers needed more time to plan,” McAnarney said.

When given the option, English teacher Brittany Brintnall said the extra plan period has opened up time for completing more grading or class preparation she previously would have had to do at home.

“I’m really enjoying the change. Just an extra plan period is making it a lot easier to get grading done at school versus at home with my toddler, which makes life way, way easier,” Brintnall said.

However, this change to schedules isn’t only affecting teachers; sophomore Laurel Stancil said she and her friends realized it was much more difficult compared to previous years to create their schedules because of a lack of class availability.

Despite receiving largely positive feedback from teachers, McAnarney said it was difficult to create schedules for over 100 teachers that balanced keeping certain classes available and giving each teacher their two plan periods.

“He would have been spread out over six hours, instead of just five, so that makes his class periods, the larger student number of students in this class, a lot larger, which can be hard because our classrooms are only so big. They only hold so many kids,” McAnarney said.

For some students who got into those high demand classes, like junior Mallary Hice, the classrooms becoming crowded was very noticeable. Hice said the more full her classes are, the more her teacher’s attention seems divided.

“In my [math] class, we are basically at full capacity. There’s almost no empty seats in that class whatsoever. It’s a lot fuller of a class. You get less time to actually interact with your teacher, because they have so many more students they have to get to,” Hice said.

Being the only 21st century literature teacher, Brintnall said it has been an adjustment to have such populated classes, but she also said she thinks both students and teachers will adjust to the change.

“It can be challenging being in a big class, just in terms of being able to get to know your teacher and getting to know your peers,” Brintnall said. “I hope that we can find some kind of common ground for students.”