Most students at Morton East had their schedule changed for the second semester. 

As we all know, school has two semesters. At the beginning of the school year students had already chosen their first semester classes, some being a semester long and other classes being a full year. So, if a student picked a semester class, their schedule changed. Many did not like their second semester classes, so they had to get assistance from their counselor. A lot of seniors had Civics & Economics first semester which also caused their schedule to change. Some class changes also had to do with a CTE teacher becoming an administrator, so things had to be moved around. We also found out that the teacher for child development had to leave, so many students were moved in or out of graphic arts.  

In a random survey of 100 Morton students, around 80% said that their schedule changed this semester.   

“I used to have zero-hour bio med, and I changed it this semester so I would have a regular schedule instead. I talked to my counselor, and she gave me advice on who to talk to in order to drop the class and they only allowed me to drop it the second semester even though I tried since the beginning to get rid of it. Now I don’t have the class, but it was dropped like a few days after the second semester started so not right away,” said freshmen Lesly Gonzalez.  

When asked about why students changed classes during the second semester, our counselors told us this: 

“Most of the time when they (students) are already in the classes they either find it too hard or find it too boring so those are two of the main reasons a lot of electives change. Now with AP classes, many kids want to give it a shot and sometimes their schedule is too demanding combined with their work and lifestyle, so they switch from AP to regular core classes,” said counselor Ms. Zuleika Cerino.  

Another counselor, Mr. Michael Weber, added to what Ms. Zuleika Cerino said.  

“It could be several things; it could be the elective that they (students) chose is a semester elective and it wasn’t offered second semester. It could also be that a class may be closed, or it could also be that the registration office started looking at now, second semester schedules and saw that ‘wow’ there’s very few students in this class or we need more in this other class so they might eliminate that class and make a new class, for example, college algebra trig it is a little tuff. Some students are not doing well first semester and it gets more difficult second semester so students like to bail and pick a new class for second semester, so they might just create a whole new class for them because there are just too many students to drop out that class,” said counselor Mr. Michael Weber.