Oak Park District 97 outlines middle school master-schedule redesign, aims to finalize by March

Oak Park Elementary School District 97 presented a progress update Tuesday on its middle-school master-schedule redesign, outlining a participatory process that staff say will produce a tentative, buildable schedule by March and move into implementation planning in the spring.

The district said the redesign, which launched in October, is intended to align with District Transformation Goal 2 (design for all) and Goal 4 (extend learning beyond the classroom). Presentation team members told the board they used community, staff and student feedback and applied educational research to produce three viable schedule options that staff ranked internally.

“Teacher collective efficacy, response to intervention and an advisory block all surfaced as high-impact elements,” said a staff presenter involved in the project. Staff said those priorities guided decisions during small-team exercises in which educators sketched ideal schedules and then rebuilt them to fit state mandates, fixed daily minutes and space and staffing constraints.

Board members and staff described the process as intentionally collaborative. “It was very quickly that we were like, ‘oh my god, this is a lot more complicated than we anticipated,’” one staff participant said, describing how team work exposed practical tradeoffs. The project team said it sought to preserve electives while increasing core instructional time and expanding intervention and enrichment opportunities.

Next steps outlined by staff include: further vetting schedule impacts with instructional departments; testing the preferred schedule in PowerSchool to confirm it can be built; and sharing elective-selection materials with families between March and May. Staff said they intend to continue community updates and to use the summer to finalize student schedules and welcome incoming sixth-graders under the new structure.

Staff emphasized that implementation will include a cycle of continuous improvement: the district plans to collect feedback during the first year of the schedule and convene a mid-year review the following school year to tune timing, staffing and program access.

Board members asked about parity across the district’s two middle schools and about capacity-building for electives such as African American studies. Staff said Brooks has offered an eighth-grade African American studies course through the district’s SOAR block with limited enrollment, and that the master-schedule changes should make the location of similar courses more consistent across buildings rather than abruptly equalizing every course offering.

The board was told the administration expects to return with a preferred, pressure-tested schedule in March; staff described that March presentation as the moment when the district will be “on the road to implementation” if PowerSchool checks confirm viability.

Implementation risks identified by presenters include PowerSchool build constraints, staffing availability for electives and potential scheduling conflicts with state-mandated minutes for PE, health and lunch. The presentation stressed the district’s goal to maintain comparable student experiences across middle schools while allowing site-level uniqueness.

The district characterized the effort as locally developed: staff repeatedly noted the schedule is the product of D97 teams and community input rather than an externally imposed template. Board members thanked the staff for the collaborative approach and encouraged continued community engagement during finalization.

The board did not take action Tuesday; staff will return with a more fully vetted schedule in March.