If you’re a student here at Garfield High School, there’s a slim chance you’ve heard of the words “trimesters per school year”, or anything along the lines of “five periods a day”. For future school years, the Seattle Public School district has been involved in researching different changes to implement to better suit students who face academic challenges. School reports dating back from the 2010-11 school year up to the 2014-15 school year for Garfield High School show that the amount of students graduating in 4 years or fewer has decreased from 91% to 85%, a significant 6% drop. To compensate for this loss, the board has multiple approaches in resolving this issue, one of which includes dividing the school year into 3 trimesters as opposed to 2 semesters with 5 classes each, giving students 1.5 more credits than the current possible 6 credits to attain. In previous …show more content…
However, the five periods per trimester will present some challenges to both teachers and students who wish to take electives along with their academic core classes. “If there were trimesters, it would obviously be easier for some students to graduate,” says freshman Mileena Ros. “But it would be harder for others who are taking a certain number of classes to continue, because there are less classes in the trimester, so it would disrupt their schedules. “ Ros isn’t the only freshman who’s expressed dismay in hearing of this news, as fellow 4.0 freshman Mari Morikawa also weighed in, saying that she has already set a clear path for herself in the coming years, and if this change is implemented while enrolled at Garfield, “this will definitely make taking both music and language hard along with the core classes simply because there isn’t room for electives.” For students who struggle to pass classes under current circumstances, these new methods might just be in their