New changes to the Intervention/Enrichment (I/E) Periods went into effect on February 7 and will continue for the duration of the third quarter. 

Students now select one room to attend during the I/E Period for the quarter rather than picking different rooms to go to every week. With this new change, the administration hopes to allow students to hone in on specific skills since they will be committed to a room for a longer period of time. 

“We have some offerings that kids are starting to like and want to attend, so we want to extend those time frames so they can really build their skillset over a course of time,” Assistant Principal of Technology and Innovation Mr. Simonet said. “Students will sign up for the first day, which is February 7 until the last day, which will be March 3, and they are signed up for one event for those days…which works out to be 17 days that they’ll be in that I/E period. At the end [of that cycle] we start the process again and students can pick a new location, or they can pick the same location.”

Teachers will be hosting events during their I/E periods where students can sign up for through Flextime Manager. The school week is structured to allow for two days of teacher-lead instructor and the remaining days open to students. 

“Each day the teacher has a little bit of discretion where they can modify the event in order to meet the needs of all the kids in the room,” Simonet said. “On those two days it’s focused on that specific skill, and those other days we allow time for students to work together or work on their assignments to make sure that they’re staying on top of everything.”

While RV administration believes that the new I/E changed will allow for students to hone in on specific skills, there are conflicting opinions regarding the new structure of I/E Periods among students. 

“I don’t like the changes to I/E period because it limits how much help I can get,” junior Olivia Doppler said. “For instance, one day I might need help with history and I put it on flextime manager but I have a science test later that week. Since the new changes, I am not able to go to science for I/E and get extra help.”

Students are permitted to use passes in the halls if they need to go to other classrooms during their I/E Period, but they are still committed to their original classroom in Flextime Manager. 

“That room [that they sign up for] is their home base,” Simonet said. “So if you have to make up a math assessment or something like that, everything is still the same, you would just go to your assigned location, get a pass, go to the [new] location and then turnstile in.” 

There have also been some issues regarding Flextime Manager and how it caters to students who only have I/E periods on either A or B days.

“During the 3rd quarter I’ve been called to the discipline office twice for a flextime manager problem,” Doppler said. “Since I have Concert Choir during 4th block on A days, I only have I/E on B days. The main problem is that flextime doesn’t let my I/E teacher know when I am at Concert Choir on A days so they don’t know where I am.” 

Since some students have courses every other day, there are concerns about how the changes to I/E Periods will work for them since they will only have an assigned class on the opposite day.  

Despite these challenges, the administration hopes to continue the new changes into the final quarter of the school year with some minor differences. 

We see this format continuing because we want to continue to develop those programs,” Simonet said. “Some things that we’re looking for in the future is that we want to make sure we’re getting some social-emotional learning components and make sure we’re building time in the day for students to work on those social skills.”

Although there are mixed opinions about the new changes to I/E Periods, the administration continues to build in structured time for students to hone in on their topics of interest during the school day.