Penfield Central School District has announced the rotation schedule for the 2026-2027 school year:

• Penfield High School will move to a four-day rotation
• Bay Trail Middle School will move to a four-day rotation
• Elementary schools will remain with a five-day rotation

At Bay Trail and PHS, this shift will increase access to services and interventions while maintaining essential instructional time in addition to allowing schools to share staff when appropriate.

“Students will have the ability to enroll in the same number of classes under the five-day rotation but will now experience more frequent exposure to those classes,” said LeAnna Watt, principal of Penfield High School. “They will have more face time with science labs, reading support, and math, among their other classes.”

Watt noted that the change will not have an impact on students enrolled in EMCC or BOCES programs. Period times will also remain the same.

Bay Trail Transitions to Grade-Level Teams

In September, Bay Trail will also transition from the house system to grade-level teams. The decision was made after reviewing the feedback from diverse stakeholder groups—including 6-8 faculty, the Shared Decision-Making Team, students, and families—who emphasized the need for a model that would better support a consistent experience for all stakeholders as they navigate grades 6-12.

“As our specialized programming and scheduling priorities have evolved over the past ten years, only about 30 percent of students are purely ‘housed’ for their core subjects—in practice, we’ve been removed from the traditional house system for quite some time in our efforts to prioritize student programming needs,” said Tracey Savine, principal at Bay Trail. “A formal shift to grade-level teams is a natural evolution that will benefit students, families and staff through consistency and collaboration.”

Assistant principals and counselors will work specifically with one grade level and loop with that particular class for all three middle school years, which will prioritize relationship-building and consistency.  Savine also noted that the move will allow teachers and providers to implement the student support process more efficiently as teachers will collaborate more frequently.

Incoming sixth graders will continue to have the majority of their classes scheduled on the first floor to help with a smooth transition to middle school. Scheduling teams will also intentionally work to place an individual student’s classes within proximity of each other.

To prepare for this shift, Bay Trail leadership will engage in internal planning through the development of a grade-level transition committee and develop several communications, presentations, and feedback sessions with families and students.

For questions about the 2026-2027 school year, please reach out to Penfield High School Principal LeAnna Watt at LWatt@penfield.edu or (585) 249-6704 or Bay Trail Middle School Principal Tracey Savine at TSavine@penfield.edu or (585) 249-6453.