Minutes per week and per month
Every student starts with a number of service minutes. Under IDEA an IEP states the anticipated frequency, location and duration of each service (34 CFR 300.320(a)(7), last reviewed 26 September 2026), and some plans state the minutes per week, such as 60 minutes a week. Others state them per month, such as 240 minutes a month. A schedule is weekly, so a monthly number has to become a weekly target first. MinuteGrid divides monthly minutes by the weeks in a month you set on the Week tab, which starts at 4. If your district counts a month as 4.3 weeks, type 4.3, and 240 a month becomes about 56 a week.
Separately, you tell it how you plan to deliver those minutes: a session length and a number of sessions a week. Two sessions of 30 minutes deliver 60 minutes. If the plan you type cannot reach the required minutes even when every session is placed, the student form says so before you build anything, so a short plan is never mistaken for a short schedule.
Sessions and the 15 minute grid
Time is kept in 15 minute steps. You choose how often a session may start: every 15 minutes, or every 30 minutes if you prefer a tidier week. A session of 15, 30, 45 or 60 minutes fills its steps exactly. A 20 minute session holds the next whole step, so it keeps 30 minutes of your day. The student is out of class for 20 minutes, and the other 10 are yours for walking, setting up and writing a note. The minutes report counts the 20 minutes of service, not the 30 held.
Your own blocks
On the Week tab, list the times you are never free to see students: lunch, meetings, duties, planning time, and travel. Each block has its days, so an IEP meeting every Wednesday afternoon blocks only Wednesday. No session is ever placed over one of your blocks.
Class blocks: never and avoid
Each homeroom has its own day: when the class eats, goes to recess, goes to specials, and teaches math and ELA. For every class block you choose one of two rules.
- Never. A student from this room is never pulled during the block. Lunch, recess and specials usually belong here, and so does anything the teacher or the plan says the student cannot miss.
- Avoid if possible. The scheduler tries hard not to pull during the block, and only does so when nothing else fits. Core instruction often belongs here. When it happens, the grid marks the session in amber and names the block.
A class block applies to the service minutes only. A 20 minute session that ends 5 minutes before math is fine, even though it holds your time until later.
Groups
Students share a session when all of these hold:
- They have the same session length.
- The group is no larger than the smallest group size any member allows. A group size of 1 means individual only.
- Neither has ticked the other under never group with. One side ticking is enough.
- If a student is limited to the students you pick, every partner is on their list. With the limit on and nobody ticked, that student is seen alone, so removing a student's only listed partner never opens them to anyone.
- The time works for every member: their days, their class blocks and their building.
Within those rules the scheduler prefers groups of the same grade and the same service, and it prefers a group to a second session when the grades are close, because a group frees your time for the rest of the caseload.
Buildings and travel
If you work in one building, leave every building field empty and none of this applies. If you split your week, set the building you start in, give each homeroom its building, and add a travel block for each trip with the building you arrive at. From the end of the travel block until the next one that day, you are in that building, and only students from it are placed there.
How the schedule is built
The scheduler first places every session in a careful order: high priority students first, then everyone's first session before anyone's second, then the students with the fewest open windows. Each session takes the cheapest legal spot, either joining a group already placed or opening a new time. Then it improves the week by trying thousands of small changes: shifting a session, swapping two, clearing a window for a student who was left out and finding the others new homes, and rebuilding one student's week. A change is kept only when it makes the week better.
Better means, first, fewer sessions left unplaced. After that it means sessions spread across different days, less time pulled from blocks marked avoid, groups of close grades and one service, and fewer separate sessions. The rules above are never traded away for any of those. The whole thing runs in your browser, in the background so the page stays responsive, and a 40 student caseload takes a fraction of a second on a laptop. The same caseload gives the same week every time; the Try another arrangement button asks for a different, equally legal one.
Why a session is not placed
Some caseloads do not fit in a week. When a session cannot be placed, it is listed with one of these reasons, checked in this order:
- No shared day
- None of the student's allowed days is one of your working days. Tick another day for the student, or add a working day.
- Longer than your day
- The session is longer than your whole day, which usually means a typing slip in the session length or your hours.
- Your blocks leave no window
- Your own lunch, meetings, duties and travel leave no gap long enough on the student's days.
- Never in their building
- You are never in the student's building during a free window on their days. Check the travel blocks and the homeroom's building.
- Class blocks leave no window
- The class blocks the student can never miss cover every gap you have. Ask whether one of them can become avoid if possible.
- Too few separate windows
- There are open windows, but fewer separate ones than the sessions asked for. Fewer, longer sessions may fit.
- Every window is taken
- The student could be seen, but every window that fits is used by another session that cannot take them, because it is full, starts at a different time, has a different length, or includes someone they must never be grouped with.
Changing it by hand
Drag a session to a new time, or select it and use the arrow keys: up and down move by one block, left and right move a day. Every move is checked again as you make it. A move that breaks a rule is allowed, because you know things the scheduler does not, but the session turns red and the rule is named, both on the grid and in the list of conflicts. From the panel beside the grid you can take a student out of a session, add one, delete a session, or place an unplaced student by hand at the first open window.
Reports and scenarios
The Reports tab prints a minutes report with scheduled against required minutes for every student, a pull-out sheet for each homeroom teacher, a small schedule slip for each student, and a week sheet for you. The Scenarios tab keeps more than one version of the week, such as fall and a January redo, and compares how many students each one serves in full. Export everything as a file to keep a backup or to move to another computer.
Step by step guides
- How to schedule IEP service minutes, step by step
- IEP minutes per week vs per month, how to convert
- Speech therapy caseload scheduling, groups and conflicts
- What to do when a student's minutes cannot fit
- Related services scheduling tool vs spreadsheet
Open the scheduler and try it with the example caseload.
Last reviewed 26 September 2026. MinuteGrid is not affiliated with any school district, state education agency, or professional association.