Officials Want To Gather More Information
Rockbridge County High School is hitting pause on its plan to shift to a 4x4 block schedule, announcing last week that the school will remain on its current seven-period schedule for the 2026–27 school year.
The decision, shared with families in a Nov. 5 email, comes after weeks of public meetings, student organizing and pointed feedback from parents and teachers — the vast majority of which was resistant to the plan.
The administration told families the division would “take additional time to gather information about the scheduling needs of all students” and use the coming year to “respond to potential changes in SOL scores” and align with new Virginia Department of Education accountability standards.
The pause follows presentations last month from Shaun Sparks, current RCHS assistant principal and incoming principal, at which he outlined a fall 2026 rollout and emphasized the 4x4 model as a way to reduce daily stress, expand elective offerings, and simplify teacher workloads.
At the Oct. 14 School Board meeting, those arguments ran headlong into a wave of community criticism. More than 60 parents, students and staff crowded into the meeting room, several delivering vigorous public comments. The student-led Stop the Block group, which created custom T-shirts and circulated a petition that reached over a thousand signatures, became a visible presence at both the board meeting and a later parent forum.
At the Oct. 20 parent meeting, Sparks fielded questions for nearly two hours and offered more details, but it wasn’t enough to quell the frustration. A consistent message, from both parents and students, was that the school needed more time and more transparency.
At both sessions, families echoed similar concerns: a desire for more data about academic impact; fears about AP, arts, and CTE programs; worries about teacher workload; concerns about student attention spans during class periods twice as long; and anxiety over what appeared to be a short timeline for such a massive change.
In response to questions from The News-Gazette, Superintendent Phillip Thompson said the division agreed that moving forward now would be premature.
“Rockbridge County High School has decided to pause its transition to a 4x4 block schedule to allow additional time for review, professional development, and planning,” Thompson said. “While the 4x4 model offers potential benefits, such as longer instructional periods and opportunities for students to focus on fewer subjects at a time, we want to ensure that any scheduling changes are fully aligned with the needs of our students and staff.”
Thompson said the division has spent the past several months gathering input from teachers, parents, and students — feedback that revealed “both support for block scheduling as well as important considerations related primarily to course sequencing and instructional pacing.”
“Taking this pause,” he said, “allows us to more carefully study those factors before moving forward.”
Thompson emphasized that no other aspects of the current scheduling system are changing, and that RCHS will continue operating on its sevenperiod day next year “while the school and division leadership engage in further discussions, gather data from comparable schools, and seek continued stakeholder input.”
Despite the contentious public meetings, Thompson says teacher interest in further exploration remains high. “We are encouraged by the fact that a vast majority of teachers at Rockbridge County High School want to continue this discussion as we explore alternative scheduling options for the future,” he said. “Our next steps will include continued collaboration to ensure that any future scheduling decisions are made in the best interest of all RCHS learners.”
The updated timeline means there should be several more opportunities for discussion and evaluation. In the wake of the initial controversy, several school officials expressed a wish that parents and students keep showing up to school board meetings to raise their voices. The Rockbridge County School Board meets on the second Tuesday of every month. Meanwhile, the division plans to continue evaluating other Virginia districts that use block schedules, and Sparks has encouraged parents to keep sending questions and meeting with him directly.
