Waterford Today

The Birmingham Public School District Board discussed a large-scale scheduling change during a meeting held on March 21.

Deputy Superintendent Dr. Mark Lineburg led discussion on the proposal for changing the district schedule from a trimester base to a semester base, which had been proposed and discussed for several years and worked on by a committee for a year. Said committee has been working on researching the implementation of the schedule change and has been collecting as much feedback and input as possible, holding three town halls, sending out surveys and presenting their ongoing work to the Board. They are hoping to present a final plan and recommendation to the Board in April for formal adoption.

"They're great. Both are great high schools, but there is room for improvement, and changing the high school schedule has been talked about for a number of years," said Deputy Superintendent Mark Lineburg. "I want to stress this has been a committee process, and the committee has engaged in tough and difficult dialog. Nothing is easy about changing a high school schedule. There is no perfect high school schedule. That said, we have a team of experts that were on the committee and then you have, between the three of us, over 100 years of high school experience, and we've tried the entire time to put our students first as we've gone through this process. So, I really want to stress, thanking the high school scheduling committee, we have worked on this for an entire year."

Birmingham's current schedule is the least-used schedule by high schools in the area and state, consisting of 5-period days and three trimesters. In contrast, the most common consists of 6-period days and semester-based schedules. Initially, the district shifted to the trimester schedule in the aftermath of the 2008 recession to reduce costs, cutting staff and other expenses. The semester schedule will better align Birmingham with other school districts and post-secondary education facilities, as nearly all colleges and universities have semester-based schedules. A district student survey revealed high potential interest in semester schedules to allow for better relationship building, higher academic success, and better preparation for post-secondary schooling. However, the students stressed that they care deeply about having a manageable schedule and not increasing their homework load.

The committee recommended changing all high schools to a semester schedule for the 2024-25 school year. While the move may decrease the number of courses students take each year (from 15 to 12) and may reduce elective choices, the district will also see an increase in teaching minutes, especially for core classes, and will have one less set of final exams throughout each year. They will also be able to better adapt to other academic facilities like colleges by having their credits and transcripts appear more streamlined on applications, and students will be able to form better relationships with their teachers and classmates. Lingering concerns with the project centered on how it will impact high school juniors and seniors, how it will change regular school hours and the general pains of such a massive change.