The Master Schedule Can Be a Gateway to Opportunity

Group of individuals holding an AVID banner with a balloon arrangement in the background.

Mar 10, 2026

AVID Implementation

Author

AVID Center

With perspectives from Melissa Womack, AVID Site Coordinator and Staff Developer; Matthew Taylor, Associate Principal, and Alexia Alexopoulos, Assistant Principal, Ridge Point High School (TX)

When Melissa Womack, AVID Site Coordinator and Staff Developer, talks about Ridge Point High School students, she can’t help but smile: “Our kids here just want to do everything.”

And they mean everything—AVID, Advanced Placement (AP®), athletics, fine arts, and Texas graduation requirements. That’s a challenge Ridge Point embraced.

Cracking the Master Schedule Code

The master schedule is often the silent gatekeeper of opportunity. Without intentional planning, students’ ambitions collide.

“When you have a student that’s an athlete and wants to be an AVID student, they don’t have room for another thing,” Melissa explains.

When students want to do more, it’s up to teachers and administrators to make those choices possible. That’s where the master schedule becomes both the challenge and the solution. At Ridge Point, leaders analyze student demand early so they can open additional sections of high-interest courses and avoid common conflicts, like AP Calculus overlapping with a required P.E. credit. By expanding offerings based on what students actually want to take, the school removes barriers before they appear.

Naturally, growth depends largely on staffing. Ridge Point administrators have to balance student interest with current and sustainable staffing.

But cracking the master schedule code is more than a logistical puzzle. It starts with a belief that if students are willing to reach, the school should make room.

Overcoming Pushback and Opening Doors

“We’re a team, and our goal is to make these kids college- and career-ready, whatever that means,” Melissa says. Sometimes, however, the team needs coaching.

Even with the school leadership’s expectation that AP teachers actively recruit students with potential, especially AVID students, some teachers initially hesitated to open AP classes to students they felt weren’t “AP ready.”

AVID teachers and leaders knew that readiness wasn’t fixed. With the right support and determination, students could rise to the level of rigor. Ridge Point used professional learning to shift beliefs, focusing on how to build skills and habits that help motivated students thrive in advanced courses. Professional learning became the vehicle for moving teachers from gatekeeping to gate-opening.

Now every teacher learns how AVID’s student profile and tutorial process bolster success in advanced classes. Students’ readiness for advanced and rigorous classes is supported the routine use of WICOR® (writing, inquiry, collaboration, organization, and reading) by 81.5% of Ridge Point classrooms. “What teachers learn most,” Melissa says, “is that most students meet the criteria, but the ‘individual determination’ characteristic is what makes a student an AVID student.”

As AP teachers began to see how AVID tutorials, peer support, and teacher partnerships create a system that prepares students for rigor, the question shifted from “Are they ready for AP?” to “How can we help them get there?” That opened doors for students who had never been invited through them before.

When AP Seminar wanted to increase enrollment, teachers intentionally recruited AVID students, confident these students had the skills and support to thrive. Demand grew, new sections were added, and a second AP Seminar teacher joined the team.

“The sheer number of advanced course sections we have is in no small part because of AVID,” says Assistant Principal Alexia Alexopoulos. “AVID students are ready for those courses, and they’re taking them, which allows us to offer more sections and create more flexibility.”

Creating flexibility isn’t just an internal effort. The team looked beyond their campus, leveraging district offerings, state programs, and college courses to open additional pathways. For example, University of Texas at Austin High School offers online courses, and the district offers all required electives and non-state-tested graduation requirement classes through a face-to-face class in the summer. When financial barriers emerged, staff secured in-house funding from community scholarships and fundraising efforts so more students could say yes.

This proactive approach proves that when a school is committed to access, there’s always a way forward. Even with overall enrollment holding steady from 2021 to 2025, participation in AP classes and the AVID Elective grew.

The Numbers Tell the Story

AP enrollment: 2,237 in 2021 → 2,672 in 2025

AP exams taken: 1,483 in 2021 → 2,360 in 2025

AP exam scores of 3 or higher: 64.53% in 2021 → 82.51% in 2025

AVID Elective growth: 12 sections (262 students) in 2020 → 15 sections (364 students) in 2025

College acceptance: 100% of AVID Elective seniors in 2025 were accepted to 4-year universities

The Student Role in Access

Doors can be opened, but students have to walk through them. Students create detailed 4-year plans in the AVID Elective. These plans are about mapping out dreams and how to make them fit in a school schedule.

The process brings tough questions: How do AP courses fit with athletics? What if band overlaps with graduation requirements? How do I make room for everything I want?

AVID teachers and students have one-on-one conversations to sort through those challenges and find creative solutions, like shifting priorities or exploring summer courses. When students commit to the process, ambitious goals become possible.

AVID students make up about 12% of Ridge Point’s student body, and their presence has become a powerful force in shaping the school’s culture of opportunity. In the first few months of school, they learn how to navigate the college application process, and they’re expected to share that knowledge with their peers. “Kids care about other kids, and they become the ambassadors,” Melissa explains. Their impact has been so significant that the college counselor now visits the AVID classroom to emphasize how valuable their support is and to thank them for helping all students pursue their college dreams.

Creating Options, Learning Limits

Melissa remembers a student early in her career who wanted to do three big things: AVID, band, and earning an engineering endorsement. Most said it was impossible. Melissa didn’t.

She sat down with the student and mapped out a plan using summer courses, online options, and creative credit solutions. Together, they turned “impossible” into a 4-year roadmap. “He was so excited that we had a 4-year plan as a freshman that showed him it’s all possible,” Melissa says. Today, that student is a junior at Texas A&M University and comes back to Ridge Point to inspire current AVID students.

That experience stayed with Melissa. It taught her that possibility isn’t accidental; it’s something adults can actively build. And once she saw how one student’s world could expand through careful planning, she carried that belief into her work as an educator.

But possibility doesn’t always mean perfection. Even with Ridge Point’s support, some students learn they can’t fit everything they hoped into 4 years. Those moments matter, too. They become lessons in choosing intentionally.

“They have to decide what matters to them,” Melissa explains. “And that’s where one-on-one mentorship becomes invaluable.” Those conversations help students navigate real trade-offs, often turning disappointment into growth.

Advice for Other Schools

Take inspiration from Ridge Point to create a culture of opportunity at your school:

To create space in the master schedule, increase the number of students who are truly ready for and choosing advanced courses. AVID strengthens the pipeline, and more student interest and enrollment give schools the leverage to expand what’s possible.
Educate yourself on opportunities. Know what’s available through your district, community colleges, and local universities.
Align staff priorities. When the entire school believes in opportunity for all, things change. Use professional learning and team building to shift mindsets.
Be open to ideas. Replace “That’s not for us” with “What if it works?”
Say yes to AVID. Assistant Principal Matthew Taylor puts it simply: “Find a way to say yes to your AVID coordinator. What’s happening there is good for kids, it’s good for culture, it’s good for our campus.”