How to Use School Scheduling Data to Plan a Better Next Year

Building next year’s schedule doesn’t have to mean starting over. The most effective schedules are crafted with insight from what happened the year before. With a powerful resource like school scheduling data, you can see exactly where the schedule worked well, where it strained under pressure, and where small changes could have an outsized impact.

School scheduling data can help balance workloads, prevent conflicts, and open up opportunities for students. The key is knowing which reports to pull, how to interpret them, and how to turn historical data into next year’s advantage.

Leveraging Metrics That Matter Most

Your school scheduling data is a goldmine of patterns, bottlenecks, and opportunities you can act on now to make the next year smoother. It’s tempting to dive into every report you can find, but not all data carries equal weight. If you try to improve everything at once, you risk overwhelming your team and diluting your focus.

Start with Who’s Coming: Admission Reports

Leveraging School Scheduling Data That Matter Most

Relevant Reports:

Admissions Applications by Incoming Year Level
List of Students

Before you dive into sections and bell schedules, start by looking at Admissions Applications by Incoming Year Level and the List of Students reports. These will provide a snapshot of how many students are enrolled at each grade level and can influence how you allocate teaching staff and room resources.

If you don’t know how many students are entering each grade, you’re guessing when you decide how many sections to open. For example, an unexpected spike in 6th graders could mean needing another homeroom or an extra section of core subjects like Math and English. If you see growth in a particular grade, start planning for more sections early. If the numbers are dropping, you might be able to combine sections and free up staff for electives or intervention classes.

Key takeaways: Use admission reports to forecast grade-level enrollment and plan staffing, sections, and room assignments accordingly.

Find Where Students Struggle to Show Up: Attendance Reports

Relevant Reports:

Attendance Exceptions Summary Listing
Attendance Percentage by Subject

The Attendance Exceptions Summary Listing pinpoints students who are frequently absent or late in specific periods, while the Attendance Percentage by Subject tells you which classes or subjects have lower attendance rates compared to others.

Patterns in attendance often reveal hidden scheduling problems. Maybe a high-absence class is always scheduled after lunch when students are less focused. Or maybe it’s held in a building far from most other classes, making it harder for students to get there on time. If certain classes consistently have higher absences, try shifting them to earlier in the day or closer to high-traffic areas.

Key takeaways: Use attendance reports to identify scheduling or location issues that impact student turnout.

Balance Your Classes and Staff: Section & Teacher Reports

Balance Your Classes and Staff using Section & Teacher Reports

Relevant Reports:

Student Count by Section
Sections by Period Number
Teacher Case Load

Student Count by Section reveals whether some classes are overloaded while others are under capacity. Sections by Period Number helps identify periods where too many core classes overlap, creating uneven workloads for both students and teachers. The Teacher Case Load shows how many unique students each teacher is responsible for.

Not all teaching assignments are created equal. Some teachers are juggling six preps and four room changes. Others have wide gaps in their day or feel underutilized. School scheduling data can quickly surface workload inequities so you can redistribute assignments next year. That’s the kind of pattern you only notice when you compare the data side-by-side. Next year, you could distribute preps more evenly and try to keep teachers in the same room for consecutive periods, reducing unnecessary stress.

Key takeaways: Use section and teacher reports to balance workloads, distribute classes evenly, and reduce teacher and student stress.

Learn from Mid-Year Adjustments: Change Reports

Relevant Reports:

Section Enrollment Changes (Add or Drop) by Date
Mismatched Teacher Assignments

The Section Enrollment Changes track when and why students were moved between classes during the year. Mismatched Teacher Assignments shows where the scheduled teacher didn’t match the original course request.

Frequent mid-year changes mean your original schedule didn’t fully meet student needs. For example, if you see that a particular elective kept filling mid-year, it’s a sign that demand was underestimated. Plan for extra sections of high-demand courses in the new schedule. If you see a mismatch between teacher assignments and requests, clarify teacher availability or qualifications before schedule building starts.

Key takeaways: Use change reports to spot mid-year scheduling issues and adjust next year’s plan to better match student demand and teacher availability.

Use Course Request Tally Reports

Some of the best insights come before you even start assigning students to periods, during the course request phase. Tools like Course Requests Tally Reports can help predict your school’s needs.

Requests by Course: See how many students have requested each course, by grade level, to plan the right number of sections.
Course Conflict Matrix: Identify course combinations that tend to cause scheduling conflicts so they can be placed in different periods.
Students with No or Too Few Course Requests: Make sure no students are overlooked before scheduling begins.

Key takeaways: Use course request data to predict section needs and avoid scheduling conflicts before the year starts.

Realign Course Offerings With Student Demand

Using school scheduling data to realign course offering

Low enrollment drains resources, while over-enrollment causes frustration. Orchestra, QuickSchools’ online master scheduler, makes it easy to spot these patterns using a few key reports.

Student Count by Section – This shows the actual number of students in each section for the current year. If you see a class with only 8 students while another is packed with 35, that’s your first clue that something needs to change.
Sections by Period Number – Sometimes it’s not the subject that’s unpopular, it’s the time slot. If your Sections by Period Number report shows that an elective always runs opposite a required math class, low numbers might be due to a scheduling conflict rather than a lack of interest.
Section Enrollment Changes (Add or Drop) by Date – Mid-year drops or late adds can reveal hidden issues. Maybe students drop a class after discovering it conflicts with sports practice, or they try to add it too late and get waitlisted.
Course Requests or Enrollment Data – If the pre-scheduling data shows 60 students requested Computer Science, but you only planned for one section, you know to add another section next year before the problem repeats.

Key takeaways: Use enrollment and section data to match course offerings to student interest and resolve over- or under-enrollment.

Optimize Classroom Utilization

Again, empty rooms waste resources while overbooked ones cause unnecessary stress. By analyzing school scheduling data on room usage, you can balance classroom assignments more effectively.

Reports to Use:

Room Schedules – Lists every room and the periods it’s assigned. Makes it easy to see unused blocks.
Weekly Room Schedule – Lays out a full week for each room so you can quickly spot consistent free periods or bottlenecks.
Sections by Period Number – When cross-referenced with room assignments, you can detect overbooked spaces or time slots with too many competing demands.

For example, your Weekly Room Schedule shows the chemistry lab is booked solid from Period 1 to Period 7 every day, while the physics lab across the hall sits empty for three periods each afternoon. By moving one of the chemistry sections into the physics lab during those open periods, you balance usage without adding new rooms or cutting classes.

Key takeaways: Use room usage reports to maximize space efficiency and avoid overbooking classrooms.

Adjust Class Sizes for Equity and Efficiency

Uneven class sizes can create real problems: overloaded teachers, inconsistent pacing, and uneven access to resources. By using Orchestra’s reporting tools, you can catch these imbalances before the schedule is finalized.

Reports to Use:

Master Scheduler with Student Counts – Shows each section with exact enrollment numbers, making it easy to see overcrowded vs. underfilled classes.
Student Count by Section – A quick snapshot of how many students are in each section, ideal for early planning.
Sections by Course (Step 4) – When paired with enrollment counts, it reveals which courses need balancing across multiple sections.
Teacher Case Load (Step 5) – Highlights workload disparities by showing the total number of unique students per teacher.

If the data from the Master Scheduler with Student Counts report reveals three sections of English 9 averaging 32 students, while two others have only 18, you can rebalance student assignments early on. This creates fairer workloads for teachers, steadier pacing for students, and better use of classroom space.

Key takeaways: Use enrollment and teacher workload reports to ensure balanced class sizes and fair distribution of resources.

Keep What’s Working: Rolling Over a Perfect Schedule

Sometimes, you find yourself in a rare but enviable situation: the schedule just works. (Hurrah!) Classes are balanced, teacher workloads are fair, and students are getting the courses they requested. In these cases, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel for next year.

With Orchestra, you can easily import settings from a previous semester into a new semester. No need to start from scratch just because it’s a new term or year. You can import course and teacher settings into your new enrollment period with just a few clicks. This preserves your existing teacher assignments, course offerings, and request templates, so your “perfect” schedule becomes the baseline for next year.

Starting with a proven structure reduces the risk of introducing new problems while keeping the flexibility to make small adjustments if enrollment numbers or program offerings change.

Key takeaways: Use the import function to carry over proven schedules, reducing setup time and minimizing new scheduling problems.

Use the Data You Have to Build the Schedule You Want

You don’t need a blank slate to make next year’s schedule better. You just need to act on what this year’s school scheduling data is telling you. Every report is a piece of a bigger puzzle. When you put them together, with the help of our Online Master Scheduler, you stop building schedules on guesswork and start building them on evidence.