In Farmington, school year split into thirds may be the charm

A typical day at Farmington High School will be pretty different for students next fall, and not just because they'll be getting off the bus in front of a brand-new building.

Students at the new high school, slated to open next year, may follow a trimester calendar with fewer class periods in each day if the school board signs off on a schedule change Monday night. The plan, advocates say, would give students more options and use teacher time more effectively, and some think it could boost Farmington's lackluster performance on statewide math and reading tests by getting help to struggling students more quickly.

The school now follows a semester schedule with seven 47-minute class periods a day. The trimester plan would have students take five classes, each lasting about 65 or 70 minutes, with an optional zero-hour class before buses show up for the regular school day.

In most cases, classes that students now take for a semester would run for a trimester, and yearlong classes would be compressed into two trimesters.

The proposed schedule -- and not everybody agrees it's the best one -- came out of a discussion started nearly two years ago by a group of about 20 high school teachers and administrators who have researched the options and taken field trips to other schools. "We found that you can argue any scheduling scenario every which way," said Shawn Anderson, a teacher who served on the committee. "We also found out there isn't a perfect schedule out there. Otherwise, everyone would be using it."

But fans of the trimester plan point to several benefits:

• Teachers and students would juggle one fewer class in a typical day and -- though students would spend slightly less time in most classes over the course of the year -- teachers would have more time every day to delve into lessons.

• Teachers would no longer have to spend one period a day on a non-instructional duty such as hall or lunchroom monitoring.

Struggling students also would be less likely to languish for months in classes they're doomed to fail before getting remedial help, said Lowell Miller, the high school's assistant principal. If they realize they're in trouble halfway through a semester, he said, "They have to sit for an entire quarter knowing that there's no way to salvage a credit." With a trimester system, he said, "They'll get a fresh start after 12 weeks rather than 18 weeks."

The school is months away from finalizing a schedule for next fall, but administrators have some rough plans. Music classes, along with Advanced Placement and College in the Schools courses, would run for all three trimesters, Miller said. And the zero hour could be used for classes such as gym and health, specialized music courses and, for students with a scheduling conflict, extra sections of core subjects such as English.

"We don't expect that a large number of students will be using very many of those," Miller said, adding that students who don't want to wake up early would be able to graduate without ever taking a zero-hour class.

Monday night, the school board also will consider pushing back the high school start time from 7:35 to 8:20 a.m., a move backed by research showing that teens perform better if they can sleep later -- and one that would prevent zero-hour classes from starting in the wee hours.