Patch Asks: What Do You Think of the High School Redesign Proposal?

“Why change something that’s not obviously broken?” might be an expected reaction to a proposed plan from the St. Louis Park School District that appears to turn the current high school setup on its head.

The plan would split the high school into five separate programs: a ninth-grade program similar to the school’s current scheme; two 10th through 12th grade “academies” focused, respectively, on humanities and sciences; a kind of build-your-own-high-school for advanced students; and a supervision-intensive program for struggling students.

Despite what looks like a radical re-imagining of the high school, the teacher in charge of coordinating the plan’s implementation said that the average high school student would hardly notice a difference.

“A lot of the pieces are behind the scenes,” said social studies teacher and Coordinator Justin Barbeau. The i3 grant is part of a federal program providing to explore a high school redesign.

The most visible change will likely be a “capstone” project students in the science and humanities academies complete in their senior year as they specialize and focus on particular subjects.

After noting that failure rates go up as students graduate the school’s ninth grade program—where they have teachers who monitor their progress and help keep them on the straight and narrow path to graduation—Barbeau said that the district is adapting the same model to help students in the upper grades succeed. While students in the advanced track won’t receive quite the same level of support or oversight, all other students will get teacher-advisers who will monitor their progress, and help them find summer internships and post-graduation internships, while also assisting them with the college application process.

Because the grant only provides enough money for four years, the district will not have to bear any additional cost in a time of tight education budgets. Barbeau said this means that the two staff members that will be hired to help set up the project will be told they need to “work themselves out of a job” by giving teachers and administrators the tools and knowledge to keep the redesigned system going once grant money runs out.