Building A Master Schedule

Introduction 01
October — Curriculum and Course Review 02
February — Preregister for the Coming Year 04
March — FTEs, Teacher Demand, and Course Loads 06
April — Scheduling Conflicts 08
April — Build Your Master Schedule 09
May — Simulations and the Final Schedule 16
June — Modifications and Adjustments 17
Summary 18
Table of Contents
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Building a Master Schedule
Introduction
One of the more difficult tasks that school administra-
tors face is creating a master schedule. It can be an over-
whelming job that takes much of the prior school year to
develop in order to create a schedule that considers the
classes and services you are trying to provide, and
resources that you have available.
“...ifyourschoolhas
someconcernsabout
theliteracylevelofa
significantportionof
thestudentbody,then
literacyintervention
programsandprac-
ticesneedtobebuilt
intothemastersched-
ule...”
Among the things that you must consider before build-
ing a schedule is the particular learning needs of your stu-
dent population. For example, if your school has some
concerns about the literacy level of a significant portion of
the student body, then literacy intervention programs and
practices need to be built into the master schedule in a
manner that they don’t conflict with other classes or the
teachers’ workload. If you don’t consider where they
should be scheduled right from the start, you may have dif-
ficulty inserting them as an afterthought. Similarly, if you
are located in a state that has mandated testing where a
passing grade is required for graduation, and you have
identified that there are some students who will need extra
support to pass one or more of the exams, then you will
want to consider how those subject should be reinforced,
and whether you will need to set aside time in the master
schedule for those interventions as well. This guide will
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1

review the order and timing of the steps that you will need
to followto ensure that the master schedule process goes
smoothly and successfully. The processes that are included
for discussion in this guide are:
• curriculum and course review
• tallies and sections
• teacher demand and course loads
• scheduling conflicts
• building the master schedule
• simulations and final schedule
• modifications and adjustments
With proper planning and organization, the difficulties
in the process for developing your master schedule can be
minimized. This guide will be useful in laying out the steps
and providing topics for reflection and discussion.
October — Curriculum and Course Review
As early as October you should begin working on your
master schedule for the coming year. Although the school
year has barely begun, it is time to begin reviewing the
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processes from the prior year that led to the development
of the current master schedule. You should be looking at
the courses that are presently in progress, and try to deter-
mine which ones will be renewed into the next school year,
which may need to be added, and which may need to be
altered or eliminated due to lack of success of the program
or the projected changes in the school’s population.
Course codes, DCT, Course Descriptions, and the Course
Catalog. You should review course codes, your district’s
curriculum table (DCT), course descriptions, and the cur-
rent course catalog. Having access to those items and mak-
ing sure they are updated with new information will make
the transition process to next year’s master schedule easier.
“Octoberisalsoatime
torevisitthecurrent
masterscheduleitself
andsomepriormaster
schedulestodeter-
minewhatstepsinthe
processwentwell,and
whichstepscauseddif-
ficulty.“
October is also a time to revisit the current master
schedule itself and some prior master schedules to deter-
mine what steps in the process went well, and which steps
caused difficulty. Of the things that went well, try to decide
if modifications will make them work even better. For that
were problematic, you should decide how you can change
the process to ensure that you don’t run into the same
issues when writing the new schedule.
If you are aware of changes in the teaching staff or the
curriculum needs for the coming year, you should acknowl-
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3

edge those changes at this time, and try to determine how
the master schedule needs to be adjusted in order to
accommodate the differences. Discuss all of the potential
changes with the members of your staff so they can pro-
vide you feedback that may be valuable when you are writ-
ing the new master schedule. You should also share your
thoughts and decisions with your school community. By
doing so, you will prevent having to deal with any last-min-
ute objections or complaints.
February — Preregister for the Coming Year
The next step of the master scheduling process is to
begin to gather tallies. There will be some elective classes
for the coming year that you will have to consider when
constructing the schedule. Therefore, you need to establish
a method for determining the selections that the students
will make, and establish a time frame for gathering the
data. You should require that the students have a set
period of time when they can preregister for the coming
semester. Have your staff distribute a Student Course
Request form (SCR) to each student who will be attending
in the coming year. Students will be required to fill it out
before a predetermined deadline. Once the deadline has
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4

passed, students who have not preregistered will be placed
by the administration according to class availability.
Master Tally. When you have gathered up the preregistra-
tion information you will be able to enumerate the results
on a tally worksheet, which in turn will be used to create a
master tally of student requests. That tally will generate an
Enrollment Request Tally Report that can provide useful
information to predict how many sections you will need to
accommodate the number of students taking each class.
“Baseduponthenum-
berofsectionsyou
determinewillbe
neededtoaccommo-
datethestudent
requestsforeach
department,anddeci-
sionsaboutwhich
coursesyouwillneed
tocancel,youcanto
begindeterminingthe
numberofstaffmem-
bersyouwillneedto
fillthestudent’s
requests.”
You will need to know the number of sections for each
course and each department. You may have to cancel
some courses based upon lack of interest or low preregis-
tration numbers. Based upon the number of sections you
determine will be needed to accommodate the student
requests for each department, and decisions about which
courses you will need to cancel, you can to begin determin-
ing the number of staff members you will need to fill the
student’s requests. A staff projection worksheet can be
helpful to determine what kind of scheduling demands will
be placed upon your staff. It can also help you decide
whether those demands will be met by the current teach-
ers and support staff, and illustrate where you need to
make adjustments in your work force for the next school
year.
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5

March — FTEs, Teacher Demand, and Course
Loads
States have formulas that they use to generate ADA
reports , average daily attendance reports, which are used
to determine a school’s need for teachers. Schools use the
ADA numbers to decide the FTE, full-time equivalent
teachers that are needed to cover the school’s workload.
The reports are useful in determining how many students
will be attending school in the coming year, and how many
teacher will be needed to cover the population. Depend-
ing upon classroom size and the number of students
enrolled, the master scheduler can use FTE reports to help
determine the number of classes and sections that will
need to be filled for the coming year.
Teacher Demand . FTEs for staff and students numbers
should be considered along with enrollment figures to
determine the teacher demand, and how that will affect
the master schedule. It is not simply enough to say that
there is an average classroom size of “x” students, so we
need “y” teachers to cover the classes. Course loads must
also be put into the mix. If there is a considerably greater
demand for Spanish than French courses, for example,
then you will likely have more sections for the Spanish
teacher(s) to cover. You may find that you need to hire an
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additional Spanish teacher to meet you course load. Con-
versely, you may reduce the French staff or cut the
teacher(s) hours because there aren’t going to be enough
sections in French class to warrant additional teachers.
Budget changes may also affect whether you can hire addi-
tional staff to cover personnel shortages. Use FTE numbers
along with budgetary changes to decide how to creatively
problem solve discrepancies between teacher numbers
and teacher demand.
“...trytocomeupwith
waysthatyoucan
includeyourstaff’s
preferencesintothe
masterschedulepro-
cesswithoutcompro-
misingtheneedsofthe
studentbody.”
Teacher Preferences. Teachers also have preferences that
you need to at least consider when creating the master
schedule. Some teacher prefer to teach earlier in the day,
for example. If they are part-time staff, they may need to
get to another school for the end of the day. To the best of
your ability, try to come up with ways that you can include
your staff’s preferences into the master schedule process
without compromising the needs of the student body.
Department heads may be valuable resources for deciding
how to accommodate staff members by providing alterna-
tive solutions. Work with the department heads to deter-
mine possible teacher course loads.
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7

April — Scheduling Conflicts
Singletons. One of the earliest thing that you need to con-
sider to help reduce conflicts in the schedule is to deter-
mine where to put any singletons or doubletons. They are
classes that will only be offered onceor twice during the
year, so they may be challenging. They are among the
hardest things to schedule at the end without creating
conflicts, so thinking about their placement early is crucial
to your planning.
“Ifthereareahigh
numberofstudents
whoareenrollingin
bothclasses,itisbestif
youcanschedulethem
indifferentperiodsof
thedaytoavoidcon-
flictsintheindividual
schedulesofthestu-
dentswhoarerequest-
ingboth.”
Conflict Matrix Report. You should also use and under-
stand the information on a conflict matrix report, which
you can generate from the data you have already taken. On
the report, you will see a comparison between two classes,
with a numerical value that shows the number of students
who are requesting to take both classes. If there are a high
number of students who are enrolling in both classes, it is
best if you can schedule them in different periods of the
day to avoid conflicts in the individual schedules of the stu-
dents who are requesting both.
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8

April — Build Your Master Schedule
You’ve now been working on you master schedule for
about six months, and the current school year is already
winding down. Your focus to this point has been on num-
bers (tallies, sections, FTEs, etc), and departments (course
loads, conflicts). Now it is time to put to use all of the infor-
mation from the reports that you have gathered and start
making programs for your students. To do that you will
need to consider what issues you may encounter, the rules
that will guide you and support you along the way, and the
steps you will need to take to complete this stage of the
master schedule process.
Issues
Some of the following issues will affect every school dis-
trict, while others may or may not apply to your school.
However, they are included to afford you the opportunity
to determine whether you should consider them.
Special Programs. The first issue you may encounter in
the building stage is special programs. They service a
group of students and you have to provide adequate
space, equipment, and staff for special program to take
place. It is likely that they will cause scheduling conflicts for
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9

teachers or students. Therefore, consider them as early as
possible so you don’t have to rearrange large portions of
your schedule to accommodate them.
Singletons and Doubletons. In a similar manner, single-
tons and doubletons will need to fit into the master sched-
ule in a way that they don’t conflict with the rest of your
calendar. Therefore you should plan them in early and
build the rest of the schedule around them. Once they
have been scheduled, try not to move them or they may
cause problems elsewhere.
“...youmayalsoneed
toprovideaCPT,com-
monplanningtime
period,sotheycan
workonthecurriculum
fortheclasstogether.”
Team Teaching. Team teaching may be another area of
concern for the master scheduler. There are many advan-
tages to using a team teaching approach in some classes,
so it may be inevitable that you have to accommodate
their special circumstances into the schedule. If you have
some classes that are taught by more than one teacher
simultaneously, then you may encounter some scheduling
issues that you wouldn’t normally see. For example, your
staff members who are teaching the class may have con-
flicting preferences. Also, apart from making room in the
schedule to accommodate two teachers in the same spot,
you may also need to provide a CPT, common planning
time period, so they can work on the curriculum for the
class together. For teachers to be successful in a team envi-
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ronment, they have to choreograph their individual plans
so that they are perceived as working together. Therefore,
coordinating both the class and preparation time in a
team-taught class may be a difficult challenge.
Parallel Classes . Sometimes students may be offered par-
allel classes. These are classes that are related to each other
enough so that they may have a need to switch from one
to the next during the year. In order to accomodate those
changes, it is best if they are scheduled during the same
period of the day. If a student has to change to a parallel
class, and it meets a different period, then the student’s
other classes have to change as well. Making many
changes can cause your job to become much more compli-
cated. Therefore, it is best if you can schedule the parallel
classes together from the start.
Staggered Schedules. You may also be faced with a situa-
tion where students are on a staggered schedule, so some
students arrive earlier than others, while others leave late.
In this case, you need to be aware of the size of the student
population at any given point in the day, and create a
schedule that is equally accessible to the entire student
body.
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11

Use the space below to add other issues you think
that you may encounter for your particular school:
Rules
This section provides some rules that you may choose
to follow as they are or customize in order to minimize the
potential for conflicts in the master schedule.
Table 1: Additional issues you may encounter
Issue Anticipated Problem/Resolution
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12

1. The first rule you should follow before you start building
your master schedule is to block out specific times for pro-
gramming that relates to special groups and interventions.
Their needs may be difficult to accommodate later in the
process, so put them in early.
2. Singletons are courses that are offered only once in the
schedule. You should place singletons into the schedule,
based on the data from the conflict matrix report. Once
you have decided where to put them, avoid changing
them. If you try to move them later, you may need to move
around much of your schedule to accommodate them.
3. Another good rule is to decide how many teacher prep
periods you will allow, and decide where they should go.
By setting the rules early you may find that you will
encounter less problems down the road. Below is a chart
where you can customize the rules to meet your needs.
“Onceyouestablishthe
rules,sticktothemand
youwillfindthesched-
ulingprocesswillgoa
lotmoresmoothly.”
Below is a table that you can use to customize the rules
for creating your master schedule. Decide on the rules
based upon the suggestions in this guide, and the prob-
lems you have discovered from past scheduling difficulties.
Once you establish the rules, stick to them and you will find
the scheduling process will go a lot more smoothly.
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13

Steps
At this point in the building process it is time to deter-
mine how you are going to build your master schedule.
One plan is to build it by program. In using that method,
you will create a schedule according to academics, ESL, AP,
Honors, Special Education, and various other programs
that you must accommodate. Another method for building
your schedule is to write it according to parallel classes.
Table 2: Setting the Rules
Rule How you will apply it
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That method will allow you more flexibility to facilitate
movement. Finally, you can build your master schedule by
grade, considering the student population and their aca-
demic needs. There may be other methods you can use to
organize your work. Consider which method will be most
advantageous and stick to that plan.
Checking for Conflicts in the Master Schedule
Student Conflicts. Once you have built the schedule, you
will need to check it for conflicts in a number of areas. One
important area you should check is the individual student
schedules. You need to ensure that they have all of their
required classes, and that you haven’t scheduled them for
more than one class in the same period. You should also
check the sections per period that you need, and deter-
mine whether your master schedule meets those needs.
Special Equipment. Room usage is an important area to
check. Special programs like art, gym, lab, computers, and
special needs each require equipment that may be specific
to different classrooms in your school building. You should
confirm that all of these classes are meeting in the proper
place, and that only one group is scheduled to use that
space at a time.
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Staff Conflicts. Finally, you should check for teacher con-
flicts, including preferences, prep periods, and classes. If
staff members are less than full-time teachers, be sure they
are only scheduled for classes during periods when they
are in the building.
Can you think of other ways you can check your mas-
ter schedule for conflicts?
May — Simulations and Final Schedule
Now that you have built the master schedule, it is time
to see how it will work in practice. Therefore, you should
conduct a simulation. By it’s nature, a simulation should be
designed to make any issues in the schedule become obvi-
ous. It will also help you decide how to cap classes if you
have additional enrollment.
“...reportswillhelpyou
analyzethedatato
determinewhetherthe
scheduleneedtobe
adjusted.”
Generate Reports. You should use the data from your sim-
ulation to generate a Simulation Report, a Scheduler Status
Report, and a Master Capacity Balance Report. These
reports will help you analyze the data to determine
whether the schedule need to be adjusted. Simulations
should be repeated after the changes to show the effect
that they have on the master schedule. Your final simula-
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16

tion and master schedule should be loaded into the Stu-
dent Information System (SIS), and you can begin placing
students into class sections. While loading students you
will find that it is best to start with the classes that are the
hardest to schedule, singletons and interventions.
June — Modifications and Adjustments
“...youmayneedto
makemodificationsor
adjustmentsfromJune
untilthenextschool
yearisunderway.”
As the school year comes to an end, you should be
aware that your master schedule may need to be modified
to accommodate end of the year surprises, like a teacher
deciding to retire, budgetary changes, families selling their
homes and moving away, or new families moving into the
district. You may also need to make changes due to courses
that students take over the summer for credit. There are
many situations you may encounter that will necessitate
accommodations in the schedule. Therefore, you may need
to make modifications or adjustments from June until the
next school year is underway.
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17

Summary
Building a master schedule that takes all of the variables
into account is not a small task. It is a process that pro-
gresses slowly from shortly after the school year begins,
through summer vacation. You may even need to make
modifications in the beginning of the school year to adjust
for new enrollment or students requesting class assign-
ment changes.
“...ifyouareprepared
forissues,establish
rulesthatwillguide
you,anddecidewhat
planofactionyouwill
usetobuildyoumaster
schedule,youmayfind
thattheprocesswillgo
moresmoothlythanit
hasinprioryears.”
Along the way there are many issues that, if you are not
prepared, can make the master scheduler’s task very diffi-
cult. There are special circumstances that can cause con-
flicts in the schedule if they are not planned in from the
beginning. However, if you are prepared for issues, estab-
lish rules that will guide you, and decide what plan of
action you will use to build you master schedule, you may
find that the process will go more smoothly than it has in
prior years.
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18

Building A Master Schedule

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