Building an Elementary Schedule - Part 10: Validating and Finalizing Your Schedule

This 12-part How to Build an Elementary School Schedule series shares expert step-by-step guidance and proven scheduling strategies to help you create better schedules this year.

Once you have a completed draft of your school schedule and have created alternate schedules as needed, it is important to validate your schedule to make sure all major conflicts have been resolved before sharing with your team. 

Let’s review the important steps necessary to ensure your scheduling efforts cross the finish line.

Validate against your scheduling goals

Take one final look to confirm that the schedule meets your goals, includes all required subjects and minutes of instruction, and addresses the list of constraints with which you started.

Share and get feedback from your team

It is rare that everyone will be completely satisfied with the schedule. Make sure your team has a chance to review and provide feedback on the latest iteration. Scheduling as a team sport will help ensure critical items are not overlooked, increase schedule buy-in and adoption, and get everyone on the same page in terms of the status of the schedule.

Revise and incorporate feedback

Incorporate any critical feedback received from your team. Remember to validate your goals, required subjects and minutes of instruction, and constraints again if changes are made.

Finalize and distribute schedules

Announce and distribute your finalized schedule. You will want to make sure everyone is aware of the new schedule as early as possible. Moreover, each team member needs to understand the schedules most directly tied to their work. This means publishing not only the master schedule but also individual homeroom and specials teacher schedules.

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