Designing a schedule

Scheduling autonomy allows for flexibilities to decide the annual school calendar, weekly schedule, as well as start times and end times of each day within state laws and regulations for minimum instructional minutes and days. This includes decisions about how student and teachers’ time will be used. Creative scheduling can allow for team teaching, collaboration time, differentiation, and moving away from the “one teacher, one set of students” model.

For example:

• Teams may decide to have a late start because research shows teenagers need more sleep. 
• Teams may choose to have minimum days two days a week to allow students to have after school internships and teachers to have collaboration time.
• Teams may decide to adopt a year-round schedule to better meet the needs of the students and community. 
• Teams may have partial autonomy if they can control some parts of the schedule, but must work within the parameters of a shared campus with shared personnel.