Our son, Wes, is a senior at Pinecrest, and daughter, Lenora, who will turn 15 in October, is a freshman. One bit of good news for me is that he drives her to school. For the first time in their school careers, I don’t have to concern myself with driving a carpool.
Both had problems with their schedules, as did many of the Pinecrest students. When we initially received the schedules in the mail the week before school started, Lenora had not been put in marching band as she had requested. Wes had been assigned to an SAT review class, which was not very helpful since he had already taken the SAT and done pretty well on it.
Freshmen and sophomores were to request changes on Thursday, July 31, and juniors and seniors on Friday, Aug. 1. So, on the designated Thursday, Lenora and I trekked over to the school and filled out the required form. Wes requested his change the next day.
Freshmen orientation was held on Tuesday, Aug. 5, and Lenora received her new schedule. She was now in marching band, but also wanted to be in Honors Earth Science. So we requested another change — that request was granted — but then the two teachers decided that her original teacher was going to teach the honors class, so it was back to the drawing board.
It took until Friday to get that straightened out. We thought her schedule was taken care of; however, she came home the following Tuesday (Aug. 12) and told us they had switched her to a first-period algebra class with a new teacher and put her in fourth period for world history, luckily with the same teacher.
This type of thing is bad enough for upperclassmen, but freshmen, who are already coping with being at a new school, shouldn’t have to deal with too much change.
As for Wes’s schedule, it took an entire week for that change to be made — and I’m not sure it would have been made then if I hadn’t gone over to see a counselor myself. He had put in his request before school started, and we felt it should have been addressed in a week’s time. In his case, we think his request might have been put aside because nobody could figure out what class he should have in place of the SAT review. After a five-minute visit with the counselor, that issue was resolved.
I have to admit that my husband, Alan, and I were a little concerned about the fact that school had been in session for several days (and teachers were assigning work and having quizzes) yet they were still tinkering with the schedules.
We realize that there are a large number of students at Pinecrest. We also understand that new teachers were still being hired and that perhaps that had an impact on the schedule changes. The students fill out the forms to select their classes for the following year sometime in the spring. We hope that next summer those involved with setting up the schedules for the new year are able to get an earlier start so that the students can spend their first week of school focusing on academics.
Over the years, I have heard many members of the community speak in negative terms about Pinecrest, talking about reports of fights, drugs and other issues. I can truly say that we have heard our son say very little about anything bad happening at the school in the three years he has been there
I get the impression that the new principal, Dr. McAnulty, is going to put the onus on the students to act in a respectful and responsible manner. And my guess is that the majority of them will live up to her expectations. And if they don’t, they probably won’t be there too long.
Reach Faye Dasen at fdasen@thepilot.com, or by phone at 693-2475.
