high school classes are looooong

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I'm looking into high schools for my son, and am not very happy with the options. The regular high school has classes that are 105 minutes long! The small charter school is a bit better, with 90 minutes. That's still really long. And they seem very resistant to him having an aide... if he's going to have to sit in a classroom for that long, he's almost certainly going to need an aide to make sure he gets enough breaks. Even so, with every class like that... I can't even imagine it. He'll go nuts.

There's a private school for children with learning differences that sounds ideal... if it wasn't 23K per year.

My son is very bright but I'm really worried that he's not going to be able to make it through high school under these conditions.

Wow... in our district they're only 75 minutes long, which seems plenty long enough to me. How many classes a day do they have?

It varies some by day -- another strike against autistic kids, although my son has been able to cope with it fairly well in middle school. At least the changes are routine.

What I most hate it that school leaves him so stressed and exhausted, he doesn't want to do anything else, even stuff that's fun. It just uses him up. I can only see this getting worse in high school.

Two thoughts: first, will the district pay for the private school if they aren't able to meet your son's needs? Second, is there a way your son could do half-day high school and homeschool the rest of the day, or do half of the class and then get a study period with support? Just some ideas...

Ours was 90 minutes and I survived. It's not 90 minutes of the teacher talking. I had an aide and I loved how I only had four classes a day because i didn't have to go to all those classes everyday and have PE everyday and it gave us more time to do our homework. But I always fell asleep in class but I probably still work have even if they were 6 classes a day or eight because of all that talking the teacher does or because I had nothing to do and I wasn't allowed to pace or play my Game Boy so I would sleep instead. I think having an aide made things easier for me because I was less stressed and less exhausted.

Why are they against him having an aide?

Have you asked your son how he feels?

When I was in high school, no classes were longer than an hour. 90 or 105 minute classes would suck. I had to do soem 75 minute classes in college, which I didn't like doing, but I managed.

Wow - I'm shocked. I have never had a high school class longer than 60 minutes, except for final exams where it was 3 100min periods. Right now at my school it's 53 min.
I just wonder if they have good special ed programs. I suppose the school is running low on aides...or they want him to have independence in high school. I don't have aides in any of my classes anymore, but used to up to 7th grade. Most of my teachers are fine with me however. I only really see aides with Special Olympics kids, not with 504/IEP kids who only have the support/homework class as their special ed class.