Scheduler SLP

An efficient way to meet student service requirements while accommodating an ever-changing campus schedule.

Scheduler SLP

SLPs must provide every student with their allotted service time while navigating bell schedules, teacher availability, student needs, other service providers, campus events, and last-minute meetings.

Scheduler SLP turns these overlapping restrictions into an efficient weekly schedule. When circumstances change, it preserves as much of the existing schedule while adjusting as little as possible.

Role

UX Designer, UX Researcher, and AI-assisted Developer

Status

Functional personal tool in active use; broader user testing is planned

Introduction

Problem Statement

Challenge

Scheduling is not a one-time administrative task for school-based SLPs. It is a continuous process of negotiating predictable, temporary, personal, and unexpected restrictions.

An SLP must ensure that students receive their required weekly service time, but even a workable schedule can be disrupted by testing, concerts, teacher requests, IEP meetings, absences, or changes elsewhere on campus.

Impact

Rebuilding the schedule manually is time-intensive, and radical week-to-week changes can create additional friction for teachers and students

Four Types of Restrictions

Predictable

Bell schedules and teacher availability

Temporary

Testing, assemblies, or concerts

Student-specific

Two students should not be grouped together

Unexpected

A last-minute IEP meeting

Inputting Restrictions

Add restrictions by grade, classroom, student, or provider, using either the built-in tool or by importing through Google Sheets.

Generating a Schedule

Scheduler SLP does more than check whether a schedule is technically possible. It generates a schedule based on the SLP’s priorities.

Adapting without Starting Over

Scheduler SLP runs against an established weekly schedule, typically the previous week’s plan. When the SLP adds a temporary event—such as an IEP meeting, concert, or testing block—the tool works around the new restriction while continuing to follow all existing rules. Instead of finding an entirely new “optimal” schedule, it preserves the sessions that can remain unchanged and moves only what is necessary.

Week 1

Week 2

Current Evidence

I use Scheduler SLP to create and revise my own weekly schedules.

It saves me approximately one week of manual scheduling at the beginning of the school year and at least 30 minutes during a typical weekly adjustment. Its value is greatest during the beginning of the year, when students are being added, many IEP meetings are occurring, and the SLP is still learning the practical needs of students and teachers.

The next step is testing the product with other school-based SLPs. The central research question is whether users are willing and able to provide enough information for the tool to generate it.