Most people at Judge have probably heard of the upcoming schedule changes for the 2024-25 school year. Obviously altering the weekly class schedule is a big change for everyone on campus, from students to teachers to coaches, so many people on campus are wondering about the impending schedule changes for next year. I sat down with Principal Lambert to answer these questions and learn about the motivation for changing Judge’s schedule.
According to Lambert, the reason for changing Judge’s schedule has to do with greater cooperation between schools within the Catholic Diocese in Salt Lake City. At the beginning of this school year, the Diocese approached Judge administration with the request that all schools within the Diocese coordinate their professional development time to take place on the same day. Professional development is for teachers, and it involves learning new teaching skills and obtaining new credentials through collaboration and training. Most schools within the Diocese do this on Fridays, but since Judge has an early release schedule on Thursdays, this is when professional development time takes place.
The point of doing professional development at the same time for all schools is so that teachers from the same grade and subject at different schools can discuss best practices for teaching that subject. Lambert also said that this would help with “vertical alignment” which he described as “eighth grade teachers being able to meet with freshman level teachers and being able to create a smooth transition from elementary school to high school.” In order to make it possible for all teachers in the Diocese to meet for professional development on the same day, the schedule had to change.
With this in mind, Lambert listed a few important requirements for the new schedule. Lambert said that currently, “we really like our schedule… it’s taken a lot of years to get it where it is.”
Because of this, the administration wants to maintain as many elements of the current schedule as possible while still reorganizing the new schedule around a common professional development day. This means maintaining the current breakdown of classes into 1-4 period, 5-8 period, 1-5 period, and 1-8 period days. Administration also wants to keep a variable schedule day which will allow for assemblies and masses, which is the current Thursday schedule. The main goal is to reorganize the order of these days in a way that will allow for a common professional development day but not change the daily breakdown of classes.
When asked what the benefits of the new schedule will be for faculty and staff, Lambert said that “there’s going to be better consistency because we’re going to have a shortened day that always gets out at the same time.” Lambert said this will most likely be Friday, and that school will get out at 12:30 or 1:00 on this day. This is a major upgrade from the current Thursday early release schedule, which is difficult to plan around because the release time changes from week to week. Lambert also said that the consistent early release on Fridays will minimize the amount of school students have to miss for sports on those days, and give students more time to work on service hours on Fridays.
While Judge is still honing in on the specifics of the new schedule for next year, the plan that administration has laid out currently looks like it will be well-received by students and faculty alike at Judge.
