Do CPS Schools Switch Students to IB DP Classes Against Their Requests? A Parent’s Firsthand Experience
Leo kicked his scuffed sneakers off by the front door, tossed his printed schedule slip on the kitchen counter next to my half-empty cold coffee, and flopped into a chair. “They switched me,” he said, before I could even ask how schedule pickup went. He pulled up the school’s app on his phone to show me: where we’d requested creative writing, AP Bio, and a study hall for junior year, there were two higher-level IB DP classes, Theory of Knowledge, and a note about the mandatory extended essay. He’d explicitly opted out of the full IB DP program three months prior, when we submitted course requests together.
Leo wants to study fiction writing in college, and the extra IB requirements would have eaten up the after-school time he planned to spend building his writing portfolio. His 10th grade English teacher had just encouraged him to submit a short story to a city teen writing contest, and he’d been talking about that creative writing class for months. This wasn’t just a minor scheduling hassle—it threw off the entire plan he’d built for the year.
I called his counselor that night, got her voicemail, and waited three full days for a call back. When she finally got back to me, she explained this wasn’t a mistake. Because Leo had a 3.8 unweighted GPA, he qualified for IB DP, and two DP sections at our neighborhood CPS high school hadn’t hit the 25-student minimum required to keep the sections open. Administrators automatically shifted all eligible students who hadn’t requested IB to fill the gaps. If they didn’t fill the seats, they’d have to cut the sections entirely, leaving the kids who did want IB DP without the classes they requested. She told me she’d already gotten 17 other similar requests that same week. This was standard practice, not a glitch.
I went in to meet her the next week, and brought the printed copy of our original request and the screenshot I’d eventually dug up of the online submission confirmation. On the drive over, I talked myself down from being angry, because I could see the bind the school was in. When I sat down, I said, “I know scheduling is really messy this time of year, and I get you have to hit enrollment numbers to keep classes open for the kids who want IB. I’m not here to argue, I just want to get Leo back to the classes he requested, that fit his college plan.” It worked better than yelling would have, and she pulled up his file right away to start the process.
What I learned from this whole mess is that this issue is way more common in CPS than most parents talk about, and there are small, concrete things you can do to either prevent it or fix it fast if it happens to your kid. The first is that if you know you don’t want your kid in IB DP, add a clear line in the special notes section of your course request that says “DO NOT SWITCH TO IB DP.” I just checked the “AP only” box on our original request, and that’s easy for overloaded schedulers to overlook when they’re moving kids last minute to fill seats. Also, save a screenshot or printed copy of your submitted request right after you hit send—don’t wait until schedules come out to go digging for proof of what you requested.
If you do get switched, don’t just email your kid’s counselor and wait. Email all three relevant people on the same thread: your kid’s counselor, the IB program coordinator, and the school registrar. Put “Schedule change request: [Student Full Name], [Student ID number], incorrect IB DP placement” in the subject line, so it can’t be missed. Counselors get hundreds of emails during schedule season, and your request will get buried if it only goes to them. If they tell you your requested class is full, don’t take that as a final answer. Ask to be put on the waitlist for your requested class, and ask for a temporary drop of the extra IB DP class so your kid isn’t stuck carrying an overloaded schedule while they wait. Most schools can do this—they just won’t offer it unless you ask. That’s what we did: Leo dropped the IB Chemistry he didn’t want, stayed on the waitlist for creative writing, and got in three weeks after school started when another kid dropped out to play varsity football.
This isn’t some giant scandal, it’s just how CPS scheduling works right now. Funding is tied to class size, so schools have to fill seats to keep programs running for the kids who do want IB. It’s a system trade-off, not something that happens because counselors or admins don’t care. But that doesn’t mean you have to accept a schedule that doesn’t work for your kid just because it’s convenient for the school.
A friend of mine whose son goes to a different CPS high school on the North Side wasn’t as lucky as we were. Her son wanted AP Physics to prepare for an engineering major, and got switched into IB DP Physics instead. The AP section was full, so he stuck it out all year. He ended up with a B+ in the class, which isn’t bad, but he had to quit his after-school robotics job to keep up with the extra IB work, something he’d been planning to put on his college applications.
Leo’s halfway through junior year now, he’s getting to write every day in that creative writing class, and his short story got an honorable mention in that city contest. We still check his schedule the second it’s released every semester, and we add that extra line to his course requests every year. I still don’t love that it’s on parents to catch these mistakes, but it’s just the way things are right now. It doesn’t take a lot of extra work to fix it if you catch it early, but you can’t just submit your course requests and forget about it.
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