El Paso ISD making changes to teaching schedule model

The El Paso Independent School District will be seeing changes starting the 2018-2019 school year.

Secondary (middle and high school) school teaching schedules will be changed to a 6 or 8 model, which means teachers will be teaching 6 out of 8 classes throughout the day. The other two classes will be for prepping and planning.

An email sent out to EPISD teachers states, “This allows for better use of schedules to benefit students, and allows teachers the time needed to plan, grade, and meet with colleagues.

The core teachers always retained their two planning periods. The change mainly comes to the non-core teachers, or elective teachers. El Paso Teachers Association President Norma De La Rosa told ABC-7, “Up until last school year, the elective teachers, the non-core teacher, when they redid schedules, they did not have a second planning period.”

In order to accommodate this change, the teacher-to-student ratio will also be changed to 25:1, which was previously 21:1, said EPISD Spokeswoman Melissa Martinez. “That doesn’t mean that you are going to have classes jammed-packed, because it really varies on the class and the type of class,” Martinez said.

This change also resulted in a displacement of 50 teachers, which means those teachers will become “support staff.” They can either be a shared teacher or a co-teacher, or if there is an vacancy for a teacher at another school, a displaced teacher that teaches that subject will fill the vacancy.

Martinez said some teachers chose to stay with the 7 to 8 model.