Just remember that this whole flap is over a NHS student's parking space. There's nothing morally reprehensible with allowing students to take an AP course and calling its paired course by different names. If the student wants to learn the subject by reading with a certain teacher multiple times, that student should be accommodated. No AP teacher does the same thing every year. Guidance schedulers should have a free hand to rename courses however they want to allow students to learn what they want from whom they want. Parents and others who want to blow the whistle over evil practices in the schools and make such mountains out of mole hills ought to have their whistles confiscated. Baker should not have been fired for allowing paired courses to be named a variety of things on students' transcripts. State officials should not have oversight in such matters (and perhaps students' parking spaces ought to be assigned under different criteria than class rank). Furthermore, Mack the Knife needs to be taken to the border of the Collier County Line and told not to come back. Teachers haven't figured it out yet, but his cutting out the block for either of his other schedules will increase the number of students they have to teach per year by another whole class. How else remove 80 teachers? Even though my principal has forbidden discussion of the schedule, nearly all my students irrepressibly report that they don’t want a schedule change. And with good reason. The block schedule helps them all—the high and low achievers, those in AP as well as remedial FCAT classes, those in JROTC and the construction academies, those in sports and academic clubs. Our honor students need the 32 credits they now have to take AP courses, win scholarships and get into the competitive universities. But our ESE and lower level students also need the 87 minute block to work in cooperative groups and receive individual tutoring. And all students deserve the opportunity to take as many classes as they can to diversify and pursue varied academic opportunities. Some students even reported that if you cut electives like JROTC and the building academy they’ll drop out. These classes teach them citizenship, cooperation and respect. You can’t put a price on these life skills and character virtues. With due respect to Ms. Hayes, then, the AP students are not the ones dictating the class schedule. All students benefit from the block schedule. It’s been working for over 15 years at our school because it offers intellectual diversity and educational opportunities for all—no exceptions. Keep it!