Consultants: Keep Exeter High’s strip-and-block model; focus on targeted fixes, professional development and enrollment study

Devapar, an education consulting firm, recommended at a Feb. 4 Exeter Township School Board Committee of the Whole meeting that the district keep its blended “strip-and-block” high school schedule but pursue targeted changes to improve student outcomes and scheduling efficiency.

The recommendation followed two on-site visits, nine administrator interviews, about 47 student focus-group participants, 67 parent survey responses, teacher and support-staff focus groups, and a review of the high school’s course enrollments, failure rates and collective bargaining agreement. “The overarching question was, is the current Exeter Township High School schedule the most efficient to ensure that the best outcomes for students are reached?” project lead Dr. Cindy Mrozewski said.

Why it matters: The consultants framed the work as a practical review of scheduling, staffing and instructional delivery that could affect course access, failure rates in select science and ninth-grade courses, and day-to-day operations such as substitute coverage and co-teaching supports. The district’s administrators and board signaled agreement with the findings and asked administration to evaluate next steps including obtaining proposals for an enrollment/population study.

Most important findings: Devapar reported the high school offers more than 400 class sections; 14 sections (under 3% of the total) had 10 or fewer students and about 30 sections had 11–15 students. For the 2023–24 school year the firm reviewed a dataset showing 263 course failures (a student can be counted more than once if they failed multiple courses). The largest single-course failure counts they cited were ninth-grade Earth and Space Science (28 failures) and Algebra I and English II (18 failures each). The collective bargaining agreement requires 240 minutes of prep time in a six-day student cycle, which the consultants said equates to about six prep periods; many teachers currently have what Devapar described as the equivalent of nine prep periods and three duty periods in the same cycle.

Recommendations: Devapar’s team urged retaining the current strip-and-block structure rather than shifting to all-block or all-single-period models. The firm said the best opportunities for improvement are inside the existing schedule: written criteria to decide which courses should be scheduled as blocks versus single periods, targeted professional development on instructional strategies for block and single-period teaching, more intentional scheduling of co-teaching, and use of existing teacher non-class time for structured interventions, collaborative planning and supported study halls. “We believe that there is no need for changing from the strip and block blended model,” Dr. Mrozewski said.

Science and ninth-grade concerns: Consultants and district staff highlighted biology and ninth-grade Earth and Space Science as areas that warrant deeper review of curriculum, instruction, assessment and scheduling. Devapar and district staff noted recent turnover in the biology teaching cohort and said that teacher continuity, curriculum alignment and scheduling could all be factors affecting Keystone and course outcomes. “It did allow us to ask some really good questions, specifically with regard to science and the scheduling of biology,” Dr. Josh Hoyt, director of teaching and learning, said.

BCTC coordination and access: Students who split time with the Berks County Career & Technology Center (BCTC) reported feeling disconnected from the high school and sometimes having inconvenient locker or bus timing. Devapar recommended the district examine coordination with BCTC days and transportation to reduce inequities between AM and PM BCTC students.

Staffing and FTE analysis: Devapar modeled potential efficiency gains and concluded that, even under an idealized all-single-period schedule, consolidating teaching FTEs without reducing program offerings would likely save only small fractions of a teacher (for example, an academic department might show a theoretical 0.5 FTE reduction under perfect conditions). The consultants and district leaders cautioned that certification requirements and program diversity make such consolidation infeasible in practice. The firm estimated that existing prep/duty time could be reallocated to provide the collaborative planning and interventions it recommends.

Enrollment and transiency: Board and administration discussion shifted to enrollment forecasting and student transiency. Administration reported a transiency report that identified about 390 unique students with one or more entries/withdrawals during the last school year; staff also highlighted that roughly 14.3% of students in one elementary building had disrupted enrollment that year, a factor administrators linked to performance variability. Consultants described two levels of demographic work: Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) projections (publicly available) and district-paid demographer studies that examine births, household age, housing starts and local moves; Devapar estimated a demography/enrollment study for Exeter would likely run in the mid-five-figure range and said typical vendor quotes for districts this size fall roughly between $10,000 and $20,000.

Board direction and next steps: After discussion, a board member asked administration to begin soliciting proposals and cost options for an enrollment/population study and examine more detailed scheduling and implementation steps with Devapar (phase 2 or technical support in phase 3 if requested). Superintendent Dr. Christy Haller thanked the consultants and the high school team for the work; she said administration was already addressing biology and scheduling questions and welcomed consultant support. A district administrator said a recommended timeline could incorporate the October 1 official enrollment count to improve projection accuracy.

What was not decided: The board did not adopt any immediate schedule change or formal vote to change staffing levels during the meeting. Devapar’s recommendation was to retain the current blended model and to pursue targeted operational, instructional and coordination changes; any formal schedule change or staffing action would require follow-up administrative work and, if needed, future board action.

Ending: District leaders said they would bring cost estimates for a population study and follow-up plans for the consultants’ recommendations to a future meeting. The board scheduled its next voting meeting for Feb. 18, 2025, and administration said it would return with options, timelines and any budget implications for board consideration.