Next year, students at John Jay high School will experience a major change in their daily routine. John Jay will adopt a block scheduling format starting in the 2025-2026 school year, shifting from the traditional nine period schedule. The new structure will feature longer class periods and fewer transitions throughout the day, changing how both teachers and students manage their time. This shift to a block scheduling format is expected to largely impact the school community, sparking many questions across the district from students, parents, and teachers as John Jay has done no prior experimentation with this new format.
While some members of the John Jay community are optimistic about the possible benefits of the block scheduling format, some are still unsure how the longer class periods will affect overall learning and classroom engagement. As John Jay prepares for a full switch involving all grades, questions have been raised by teachers and the student body about how this change will affect the future of education at the school.
Under the new block scheduling format, students will attend four classes per day instead of the usual nine, with each class lasting eighty minutes. The schedule will alternate over two days, allowing for a total of eight classes across a week. Supporters of the shift towards block scheduling believe that the eighty minute period structure will allow for more focus towards certain classes daily and provide students with more opportunities for more hands-on activities and in-depth learning. “I had block scheduling at my old school, and I think it made a huge difference for me, particularly in not having classes at the same time every day” said Em Krolick, a junior at John Jay, when asked about her thoughts on the new scheduling format. This helped me to not be consistently tired in one class each day. The biggest plus, though, was not having each class every single day, which helped space out homework and assignments”.
With this new schedule in place, both students and teachers will have to adjust to longer periods and an alternating day schedule. While some may find it challenging to adapt to this new format, many are hopeful that the change will lead to deeper understanding of the subjects that students are studying. As the year progresses, the impact of block scheduling on academic performance and the mental health of students will become much clearer to administration.
However, not all students and teachers are convinced that the shift to block scheduling will be beneficial for the school. Concerns over the longer class periods have been voiced by students who worry that staying focused for eighty minutes at a time may be difficult, especially for subjects like History and English that tend to rely on a more lecture-based structure. Many believe that if daily lessons are not adapted for the new structure, it could lead to disengagement and have a heavy impact on how much information students are able to retain from their classes.
The Focus sent out a survey to the John Jay High School student body, receiving one hundred and seventy-five responses over the course of two weeks. In response to the prompt of, “Do you feel as if John Jay Administration has taken student opinions into account in their consideration of moving to block scheduling”, forty-five percent of students surveyed selected the response of, “Definitely not – I think that this is purely an administrative decision where students have not had their voices heard”. In addition, seventy-seven percent of students surveyed answered “no” to the prompt, “Do you think that John Jay Administration has informed the student body about the plans to implement block scheduling enough?” – and in response to these concerns, I sat down for a conversation with Assistant Principle, Dr. Biswas to ask him some questions about the transition.
“Administration has been paying close attention to the student experience since the end of Covid”, said Biswas. “Our main goal was to create a schedule that allows every student to have a lunch with their friends.” Block scheduling was not the only type of scheduling that John Jay Administration explored to implement a unified lunch, however, block scheduling was the schedule format that aligned with their goals the most. “We wanted to create an A Day/B Day rotation, like what we have now. Other schools where the blocks are less than sixty minutes long create a sixteen-day block rotation that we found too complicated. Our eighty-minute blocks solve that problem, allowing for a simpler rotation for students to keep track of”. This unified lunch has raised many concerns over how the cafeteria will be able to run smoothly enough to provide meals for the entire school over a one-hour period. When asked their opinion on the move to block scheduling, staff in the in the cafeteria who would prefer to remain anonymous stated, “There is absolutely no way this will work, and if students have any power to speak up and change the decision about block scheduling, I hope they do.” When I asked Dr. Biswas how this unified lunch will work, he said, “The first few weeks will most likely be hectic. We have spoken to schools around Westchester who are on a similar schedule like Byram Hills, Somers, Bronxville, and Horace Greely, who informed us that the first weeks were difficult, but students eventually found the right time for them to go through the cafeteria to get lunch.”
Dr. Biswas also made it a clear point that this new structure will require more project-based work as having a class every other day may cause difficulty for regular testing and assignments of that nature. “We recognize that this is a change for both students and teachers, meaning there will be an adjustment period. There is ongoing professional development on how to teach a curriculum over a longer period to help teachers make this transition as smooth as possible”.
Unfortunately, nobody at John Jay can definitively say that block scheduling will be perfect, or even close to it. However, it appears that administration has a plan that has been researched and tweaked over the course of the last few years to create what they think is the best schedule for the school to move forward with starting in September. Administration acknowledged that change can be difficult and frightening, but they encourage that students keep an open mind on how block scheduling could positively affect the John Jay community.
