School district officials paint an optimistic picture of changes coming to Douglas County's nine high schools in the 2012-13 school year.

“I believe our students are going to have a much better experience next year,” assistant superintendent Dan McMinimee said during the May 1 school board meeting.

With all teachers taking on an additional session, class sizes that steadily have increased over years of budget cuts will again fall, and electives will be preserved.

To make the altered schedules work, teachers who traditionally had two 52-minute planning sessions each day likely will have one 90-minute session next year. Most high school principals are trimming lunch periods, breaks between classes and shortening or eliminating the period called Access or Advise - a free period students often use to seek extra help. By taking those steps, little instructional time will be lost, McMinimee said.

Longer class periods likely will require teachers to change the way they teach to keep students' attention for the full 90 minutes. But that's in keeping with new education models that stress collaboration among students and experience-based teaching, he noted. Science teachers may be among those who welcome the added time.

“In some of the specific disciplines, it's nice to be able to start a lab and finish a lab in the same period,” McMinimee said.

While he admitted the situation is not ideal, the district believes it's an improvement from the last few years.

“Right now is the best we can do,” McMinimee said.

Not everyone is looking through the district's rosy lens, one teacher told the board later in the meeting.

“To be honest, most teachers don't find this to be a wonderful thing,” Teddy Goldman, an art teacher at Mountain Vista High School said, adding that if board members were asked to do more work for a minimal pay increase, “You would not be jumping up and down.”