Down to the Wire

So tomorrow is the first day of school.   Actually it's a half day, but who's quibbling?

And no, I do not know why we go a half day on a Friday, have a teacher in-service on Monday and the kids finally show up for a full day on Tuesday.  It doesn't make sense to me either.

Anyhow, I'm not sure if it's because this is my eighth first day of school, or because I finally got a bit more organized, or if I got started earlier, but I had my room set up and ready to go about three days ago.  I got the bulk of it done Friday of last week, but started going in every morning this week (to get back on the getting up at o-dark-thirty routine) which enabled me to get a lot more done.  No last minute copying, no last minute poster-hanging (I hate that part), no last minute anything.  So it's a bit weird because everything is ready to go.

Except we have no homeroom rosters.

Seriously.

I sarcastically suggested we line the kids up in the theater like you did as a kid when you chose teams on the playground and pick the kids we want in our homeroom. (Actually, now that I think of it, I kind of like that idea.)

I love our guidance department. They are rock stars. They are some of my best friends. So, it's not really fair that they get blamed for the whole scheduling problem issue because truly, it isn't their fault. It's technology. We use PowerSchool (which I usually love for the most part) but they did some changes over the summer and for some reason it has not been cooperating. At all.

First problem is that we've gone from three seventh grade teams to two seventh grade teams. Our numbers are down this year (which is weird because they are building apartments and subdivisions all over our zone but alas, no middle school kids. Perhaps they're all elementary.) And the eighth grade has gone from three full teams to two teams plus a "mini-team". Some of the eighth grade teachers are going to be teaching one class of seventh graders to reduce the class sizes. So, since Mrs. Eagle's team is closer to the eighth grade hall than my team is, her team should be getting about 30 or so more kids than my team (and these kids will be the ones that have one eighth grade teacher). Confused?

So, for some reason that no one can figure out, PowerSchool wants to schedule all new seventh graders onto my team. And from what the Guidance Goddess said, yesterday and today was Scheduling Hell as parents and kids were lined three deep trying to register for school.

And then there's the issue of balanced class sizes. Although we currently don't have homerooms, we can see some of the kids that are in our other classes. My class sizes are quite a bit bigger - for the most part - than last year. Let's see, 3rd period has 29, 4th period has 23, 5th period has 22, 6th period has 37 and 7th period has 17. (Yesterday 6th period had 42).

All of this will probably change by tomorrow. I can cram about 34 kids in my room, with 7 lab groups of 4, one lab group of 2, and 4 flying solo seats. It should be interesting to see how many show up, and how it all shakes out.

Oh boy!!!