When to start next year’s master schedule
Start next year’s master schedule in the fall. Update the course catalog by December, collect course requests in January and February, set sections and staffing in March, build and fix the schedule in April and May, and send it to your student information system in June. July and August are for changes.
Updated
Why start so early?
Because the build depends on everything before it. A schedule built from late, messy course requests will be late and messy too, however good the tool.
Most of the calendar below is spent getting the inputs right: the catalog, the requests, the sections and the staffing. The build itself is a short step near the end, and the review after it takes longer than people expect.
What happens each month?
This is a typical year for a school that builds in the spring. Shift it a month either way to fit your calendar; the order matters more than the dates.
| Month | What to do | In nOS |
|---|---|---|
| October | Look back at this year’s schedule. Note which requests went unfilled and why, and decide what changes next year. | Try it on this year’s data and see what it would have placed. |
| November | Update the course catalog: new courses, retired courses, prerequisites and graduation requirements. | Courses, prerequisites and graduation requirements live on the Courses sheet. |
| December | Publish the catalog. Make a first estimate of staffing for next year. | Teachers go on their own sheet, and are picked by name everywhere else. |
| January | Open course requests. Counselors meet students, who rank their choices and pick alternates. | Requests come from your student information system or a file. |
| February | Close requests. Clean them up: missing students, unknown course codes, missed prerequisites. | Preflight marks each problem on its cell, with a fix. |
| March | Count requests per course, set the number of sections, assign teachers and rooms, and write down the rules. | Write rules as sentences. See the ceiling before you build. |
| April | Build the schedule. Read every request that didn’t fit, and why. | The build takes hours. Every miss has one of 12 plain-English reasons. |
| May | Fix what’s left, worst first. Review the draft with department heads and counselors. | Move sections on the Board or ask nOS AI. Every change is staged for review. |
| June | Load the schedule into your student information system and check student schedules. | Preview every change, then send it back or export the files. |
| July | Handle new enrollments, staffing changes and schedule change requests. | Pulling again shows what changed before anything is replaced. |
| August | Make the last changes and release student schedules before the first day. | Export schedules as CSV, Excel, PDF or calendar files. |
When should course requests be collected?
Most schools collect course requests in January and February, after the catalog is published and before staffing is set. That leaves March to turn the requests into sections.
Collect ranked choices and alternates if you can. When a first choice can’t be placed, an alternate gives the build somewhere to go, and gives you an answer you can stand behind. Our guide to collecting course requests covers this in more detail.
How long does the build itself take?
By hand, building a master schedule often takes more than a hundred hours, spread over several weeks of the spring. With software that builds it for you, the build takes hours.
The review is what takes time either way. Plan a few weeks between the first build and the version you send to your student information system, so department heads and counselors can look at it.
Is it too late to start in the spring?
No, but you have less room for mistakes. If requests are already in, you can still check them, set sections and build in April.
What you lose by starting late is the chance to fix the catalog and the staffing before requests come in. Those problems show up later as requests that can’t be placed.
What makes schedules run late?
Usually it is the inputs, not the build. Requests that arrive late or full of errors, sections decided before the requests are counted, and staffing that changes after the build are the common causes.
Singleton courses are the other one. When two singletons that the same students want land in the same period, the fix often means changing sections, which pushes everything back. See how to schedule singleton courses.
Common questions
When should a school start building its master schedule?
Start planning in the fall. The catalog should be updated by December, course requests collected in January and February, and the schedule built in April, so it can be reviewed in May and loaded in June.
When do schools collect course requests?
Most schools collect course requests in January and February, once next year’s course catalog is published. Some start in December or run into March.
When should the master schedule be finished?
Aim to have it in your student information system by June. That leaves July and August for new enrollments, staffing changes and schedule change requests before the first day.
What is the best time to try new scheduling software?
In the fall, on this year’s data. You can see what it does with a schedule you already know, and be ready to build the day next year’s course requests close.
Try it on your own data.
Create an account and use the full planner on your own data.