(Orig Post 5-11-2006) 'The Zero Hour" or; Thinking Outside the "Box" of the Four Period Day

(Ed note. As background for the minutes of the Evansville School Board of June 12, 2006, I have reposted the post of 5-11-2006 which addressed the matter of AP Courses and the Four period Day. The Observer will be posting a series of articles on the Four Period Day, The History, The Promise, The Results, and, The Need for Change. I welcome articles from school staff, parents and observers. Send to fre2observer@yahoo.com)

Recently Jamie Gillespie, the principal of Evansville High School, gave each student planning on taking AP Chemistry in the upcoming 2006-07 school year the following letter.

"As you are probably aware, we are struggling to be able to offer AP Chemistry to you next year in a way in which we will not need to cut some other science course or hire an additional teacher. At this point, we have come up with two options and I need your input as to which option to put into place for the 2006-07 school year.

The first option is to offer AP Chemistry as a "zero" hour course. This would mean it would run from 7:00 to 7:45am every day, for the entire school year.

The second option would be to offer it during the regular school day, for one block for two terms. We would also offer AP review sessions during third and fourth terms to prepare you for the exam. Additionally, there would be some work required of you this summer, to prepare you to start the course during first term........"


The purpose of this post is not to go over issues of the short notice of all this, or whether less terms would even work for AP given the pass rate. That I will leave to others to debate.

The purpose of this post----is to point out that moving to a "Zero" hour, plus even considering another 5th hour is inevitable---here is why---by the numbers.

Students and parents have seen how limiting the 4 period day is in terms of "combinations" available to schedule. That is why NOBODY does a strict 4 period day---as we all learned in algebra II class, the probability section--the combinations are 4x3x2x1 or 24 total combinations. The numbers of possible on a 7 period day with 1 hr for lunch are---7x6x5x4x3x2 or 5040 combinations.

It has been 42 years since I took that class, so if there are some young students in probability class you can weigh in on this for me....however

The difference between 24 combinations and 5040 combinations is a big,big,big one.

The Evansville Schools chose to add two "skinnies" for just this reason. If they choose not to go off the "block" schedule entirely--which I will debate in a separate post----it is inevitable that there are additional "Hours" made available.

It is a matter of MATH not personalities.

There are other issues such as busing expense, and it has been noted that Evansville has only one bus run. It has lower than average transportation costs anyway. In any event------

It is time we talked about the "ZERO HOUR". The Observer welcomes the discussion.