Staggered scheduling could be coming to 5 Burnaby high schools

The Burnaby School District is warning that five city high schools could be moving to staggered class scheduling for the 2025-2026 school year due to a space crunch caused by growing student enrolment. 

In a letter sent to student families, the district said class times could be adjusted to start earlier and end later in order to squeeze a fifth block of classes into the daily schedule.

It says students will still only attend four blocks, but that the additional period will increase the capacity of schools by "allowing the possibility of students' schedules to be staggered, depending on their classes."

The five schools are Alpha Secondary, Moscrop Secondary, Burnaby Central Secondary, Burnaby North Secondary, and Burnaby Mountain Secondary.

The potential change could mean classes starting as early as 8 a.m., which isn't sitting well with everyone.

"That would be very stressful for me personally because I don't do good in the mornings," said Alpha student Michael Furlan. "And, like, teenagers out of every age group need the most sleep statistically. So, it's actually better for teenagers to start at nine rather than actually earlier." 

Alpha is located only a few blocks from the explosion of new residential towers at Brentwood Town Centre.

The school was extensively renovated in 2019, although those upgrades now seem woefully inadequate for the population growth everyone knew was coming. Already, the Alpha's library and multi-use rooms have been converted to class space, and a block of portables has been added to the school lawn.

Same thing at nearby Burnaby North, which was overcapacity on day one when it reopened in January after millions of dollars in upgrades. There, too, school officials have had to be creative in finding places to put all the students.

Burnaby District Parent Advisory Council chair Harinder Parmar says the district is already asking for money to add extensions to both schools. 

She says the news that staggered scheduling may be coming has some families worried about how they will manage.

"Concerns are how is it going to affect extracurricular activities? How is it going to affect families when you have multiple children —one starting at one time, another starting at another," she said. 

CBC reached out to Burnaby Schools superintendent Karim Hachlaf, who was not available for an interview. In a statement, he said the district is "mindful" of the impacts of staggered scheduling.

"The pace of growth at many of our high schools is such that we can't wait to build ourselves out of the capacity issues we are immediately facing," he wrote.

Burnaby DPAC member Morten Rand-Hendriksen is so concerned about school overcrowding he's taken to posting video explainers on social media in an attempt to bring more attention to the issue.

Rand-Hendriksen says the bottom line is that the province needs to modernize how it plans for schools and become better aligned with community development.

"What's happening here is what we in the software development world call 'legacy debt.' We've under-built the [school] system and have not prepared for a population explosion. And the cost of fixing it is astronomical ... and so it's easier to push it down the road and say eventually some magical thing will solve it," said Rand-Hendriksen.  

"But when you have a legacy debt problem, the thing you need to do is go and look at the causes and then rebuild the system to better integrate what you're trying to do." 

CBC reached out to the Ministry of Education. A spokesperson said until the results of the provincial election have been finalized and a new government sworn in and a new cabinet appointed, government communication is limited to critical health and public safety information.