Fixes put a glitch in job

Counselors work extra hard after school changes

By: By Kim Underwood | JOURNAL REPORTER
Published: August 30, 2009

A new class schedule for high schools meant countless extra hours of work for guidance counselors this summer.

"They were Trojans," said Paul Puryear, the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County school system's assistant superintendent for high schools. "They have worked really hard to make this thing work."

And they have had to continue to work hard since school started Tuesday.

No matter what the schedule is, Puryear said, such things as balancing classes, fixing glitches and scheduling students not already registered are always necessary during the first 10 days of school.

This year, though, the switch to a new schedule complicated matters.

"It is not as easy as it has been in the past to make those changes," Puryear said. "It's a little slower this year…. For the counselors, it has been a major issue."

In previous years, half the high schools were on block schedule with four periods and half had a seven-period day. This year, all the schools have three block periods and a shorter period. School officials knew going into this year that switching over was going to require extra work and budgeted extra time for guidance counselors for this summer.

Along with expected challenges, the summer brought unforeseen ones. The state uses a data management system called NC WISE (N.C. Window on Student Education). As it turned out, the system couldn't distinguish the difference between certain classes, such as U.S. history taken as a one-semester block class and U.S. history taken as a year-long class, Puryear said.

Also, said Superintendent Don Martin, when NC WISE switched the data from last year over to this year, it locked in certain things.

"You have to schedule by hand the conflicts," Martin said. "There are more conflicts than normal."

"It took more time to make it work than we anticipated," Puryear said.

Since school started, school officials have been concentrating on dealing with such scheduling issues as classes that need to be balanced, students inadvertently assigned to the wrong class and students assigned to a class that they no longer need to take because they passed the course in summer school. As those issues are resolved, he said, they will focus on changes necessary because students have changed their minds about what they want to take.

"Overall, I think it's gone OK," Puryear said. ""We're still adjusting. We're still balancing."

■ Kim Underwood can be reached at 727-7389 or at

kunderwood@wsjournal.com
.