Some students were able to get a sneak preview of their schedules through a shortcut on InClass before the school even handed out schedules. The Information and Technology staff, upon finding this out, immediately decided to remove the shortcut.

“The Gunn administration was not upset about students seeing their schedules,” Technology Coordinator Lettie Weinmann said. “However, we share InClass with Palo Alto High School and all three middle schools, so what we see is what they see. Since the middle schools did not want their students to see schedules before they had been finalized, we decided that the best thing to do would be to disable the Personal Information button.”

At first, the administration was unaware that students had access to their schedules early. “We found out about the shortcut when students came to the main office in early August requesting schedule changes,” Weinmann said. “We asked them how they found out what their schedules were, and they told us how they had dug in to InClass to find them.”

The administration soon found that the shortcut was well known to students. “News among students travels really fast, especially news that is beneficial to everyone,” sophomore Jack Kwan said. “Once one student found out how to find out their schedule through InClass and told his or her friends, then those people told others, and eventually more than half the school is informed of this. So in a day or two, more than half the school already knew their schedules.”

According to Weinmann, the administration was not worried that this would pose a potential threat to the security of InClass and the students using it, but she does believe that it may have set some students up with expectations that would cause disappointment later. “Student schedules are not finalized until the very last minute–the day before seniors pick up their schedules,” she said. “The week prior to this, counselors and administrators are working hard to move students around to balance class sizes. Therefore, the schedules that were posted on InClass during that second week of August were not the ones handed out to students on schedule pick-up day.”

Likins agreed. “The schedules were still very fluid at that stage of the planning, so nothing was completely set in stone yet,” she said. “To avoid people having certain expectations about what their schedules should look like, we decided that it was best for students to only see the final product.”

Sophomore Vincent Yang was one of many students who used this shortcut to preview his schedule. “It was really helpful to be able to see my schedule online so I knew what I would be expecting in the upcoming year,” Yang said. “It’s always so much of a hassle to stand in line in the morning and to wait to be handed our schedules. I and many other students don’t understand why the staff would have taken the shortcut down. In the future, hopefully we’ll be able to just see our schedules online and not have to go to school to pick them up.”

Weinmann and Likins both agreed that the possibility of setting up a system for students to see their schedules online sounds practical. However, there is no intention of changing the way that schedules have been distributed. “Building a master schedule for 1,920 students and over 500 class sections is no easy task, and we need the flexibility to make changes in the schedules right down to the last minute,” Likins said. “Also, this year we wanted to make sure that all students cleared their book obligations prior to starting classes. Holding schedules is a great motivator for getting those books turned in.”