Demopolis High School will have a new structure to its schedule in the 2012-2013 academic year after the DCS Board of Education approved a proposal Monday night.

The redrawn school day will allow Demopolis High to add an eighth period to its day, a time allotment it will use to help struggling students with Response to Instruction.

“It’s built around the state-mandated Response to Instruction, which is designed to help students who are not passing in their classes and is also designed to help those who are not passing the math and reading areas of the graduation exam,” Demopolis High School principal Leon Clark said of DHS’s eighth period.

The plan, which was formulated by the DHS faculty as its strategy to handle state-required RTI standards, will not only offer extra assistance to struggling students, but will also stand as a reward to those who are not behind in classes or standardized testing.

“Basically, we’re going from a seven-period to an eight-period day and our eighth period is what we are going to call our Tiger Period,” Clark said. “The students that are passing everything, including the reading and math portions of the exams will be getting out of school at the end of seventh period. Those that are failing in those areas of the graduation exam, failing classes or need to make up tests will be required to stay for that eighth period.”

In order to create enough time in the schedule for the period without adding too much time to the school day, the plan will call for slight alterations to each class period.

For students who are not required to participate in the Tiger Period but do not have transportation arrangements to leave school at 2:46 p.m. when seventh period ends, DHS will offer other options.

“We’ll have study halls or, if they needed to get some extra help from any of their teachers, those things will be available for students who cannot set up transportation to be able to leave at 2:46,” Clark said.

Clark also made it clear that all students who are in need of RTI will be required to participate in the Tiger Period with no exceptions, including athletes, band members and other students with extracurricular activities that would ordinarily have been at practice under the former schedule.

“If we’ve got athletes that are failing, they will be involved in this remediation also,” Clark said. “This affects all students. They will be required to attend.”