The Dexter Leader
A Heritage Newspaper
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DHS moving to trimester system
By Sean Dalton, Staff Writer
PUBLISHED: January 24, 2008
The final semester of the current school year will be the final semester at Dexter High School before shifting to a "trimester" system.
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High school students will attend school for three, 12-week semesters consisting of five class periods a day.
The Dexter Community Schools Board of Education approved the new format last week following a presentation by DHS Principal Kit Moran on new core and elective course offerings.
The new courses are designed to bring the school in line with new state Grade Level Content Expectations for high school, as well as the Michigan Merit Curriculum, to be ready for the graduating class of 2011.
It will be the first to have spent the entirety of high school under the trimester system.
"Many schools are coming from a traditional (schedule) to a trimester and from the block to a trimester," Moran said. "But they're going for two different reasons, and fortunately we're going for the right reason."
That reason is to meet the MMC standards and to offer more choices to students, according to Moran.
He said under the semester system there wasn't as much margin for error or opportunity to make it up if a student had difficulty and failed a class.
"In the case of special needs students, our intent is to pair them with a special education teacher, so we're hoping that way that students pass the class the first time through," Moran said.
"We don't want them to get behind. We don't want them to get involved with all the junk that is involved with falling behind in ninth grade.
"If we can keep them creditworthy all the way through 10th grade, we're pretty sure we can give them a nudge out of the nest as upperclassman."
Under trimesters the idea is to spend more time on one topic per day. Under a trimester system, 83 percent of the school day will be spent instructing, up 3 percent from semesters.
In block scheduling, another alternative to trimesters, 75 percent is spent instructing, according to Moran.
"We predict that we are probably going to need some increase in staff from one to two total FTEs (full—time equivalent teachers)," he said. "We won't necessarily need bodies, but more hours spread out over the staff. Were we to go to block we would've had to hire significantly more teachers."
Moran said that the push for trimesters by the MMC fell into his lap when he became DHS principal last year, although he would have pushed for trimesters anyway after exploring it as an option in administrative team meetings, academic department meetings and in discussions with department chairs.
"There's more room for electives, music, AP (advanced placement) classes, foreign language," Moran said.
Under semesters, a student can take 12 classes per year or 48 classes during their high school career. That allowed for meeting the MMC, but at the cost of leaving no room for extracurricular and elective courses.
Another issue is that the DHS schedule is driven by student demand, so courses are offered based on how many students sign up.
"It was becoming more difficult before the MCC to get everything that students wanted," Moran said. "We knew they would not be able to take the four years required by the state for math, science, social studies and MCC required visual performing arts, health and wellness requirements and others.
Five school districts in the West Washtenaw Consortium have moved or will move from semesters.
Saline and Chelsea steered in that direction, along with Dexter now. Manchester operates under a seven-period school day.
Moran listed the need for fewer textbooks among the benefits trimesters will bring.
Teachers will also have fewer papers to grade at a time in a class, for example, he said.
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