Students, parents say new Greater Latrobe Senior High schedule cut kids' access to extra help

Administrators this year cut back on flexible time that was built into the schedule at Greater Latrobe Senior High after they say too many students abused the midday period intended for club activities or extra help with academic subjects.

But students and parents told the school board this week the district went too far in reducing flex time to just two 30-minute periods per month, leaving students struggling with homework and anxiety.

High school sophomores Ben Ament and Kaden Shannon told the board many students are missing out on help they would have sought out when the 30-minute flex period was scheduled daily. They said arriving to school early or staying after to meet with teachers isn’t an option for students who rely on bus transportation.

“Our main concern is over lack of remediation time during the school day,” said Shannon. “Most teachers are unable to meet during our study hall periods if they have other classes.”

Two flex periods per month “is not nearly enough time for students to get academic help or go to clubs that don’t run after school,” said Ament.

“This is a real concern as clubs are places for students to learn social, civic, philanthropic and leadership skills,” Shannon said. He suggested “making the schedule more similar to last year while mitigating the issues that happened. I believe that this is a solvable problem.”

Anna Sterrett and Pam Bacan, who have children attending the school, expressed concern about the new schedule’s impact on students’ mental health. Each said one of their children experienced a panic attack related to anxiety about the changed schedule.

“This is not acceptable that changes have been so drastic,” said Sterrett. “If we are preparing our students to go to college, the schedule is not allowing for that kind of growth. Students who are high-performing need time to meet with their teachers.”

“My kids come home crying,” Bacan said. “This schedule is messing with mental health, it’s messing with these kids’ lives. It’s not working.”

“I hear what the kids are saying,” said Jon Mains, assistant to the superintendent for secondary education. While Greater Latrobe is just a few weeks into the new school year and the new senior high schedule, he said administrators have been meeting with teacher leaders and student class officers about the related concerns.

“We’re recognizing that we have to find some time for kids to get help and we have to find some time for clubs to meet,” Mains said. “We’re talking with teacher leaders on what we can do to tweak a few things to get kids that time they need to get help.”

Mains said flexible time — most recently known as GL Time — was introduced in 2018 but has led to discipline problems.

“A lot of kids utilized that time exactly how it should be used, but obviously some kids did not,” he said. “We expected kids to use that time to get tutored, and I think that translation was lost. They saw that time as their time, so they weren’t going to get tutored.

“It was a system that wasn’t working in our eyes. We had to make a change to rein things back in for the safety of our kids and our faculty.”

Mains said a similar but more structured midday Wildcat Time period remains in place at the adjoining junior high.

Another change at the senior high discontinued a 30-minute lunch period for all students that was paired with GL Time and allowed them to eat in various places beyond the cafeteria — including a commons area, some classrooms and even outdoors. Now students eat in shifts in the cafeteria.

Mains said there also were discipline problems during the lunch period.

“I know many cases where students have no friends to sit with at lunch,” Ament told school officials. “I understand your reason for changing the schedule — to keep our school out of trouble in the hallways and bathrooms and such. But the sad fact is, if kids want to cause trouble they will do so, no matter what time they are given.

“We are being treated less like the adults you want us to become and more like the children we once were.”

Mains said the planned changes in the schedule were introduced to students near the end of the 2023-2024 school year.

But Chris Sheetz said it wasn’t in time for his daughter, who included several advanced classes in her sophomore schedule before learning that the flex period would be curtailed.

He said his daughter is bringing home more work from school.

“We’re concerned it will quickly add up to be too much for her to maintain a quality school-life balance,” Sheetz said.

Related:

• Greater Latrobe using workout classes to ease athletes' after-school schedules

• Greater Latrobe OKs $1.7M artificial turf replacement for high school fields

• Work underway to replace Greater Latrobe gym floor after pool maintenance mishap