REDMOND — Redmond Proficiency Academy is gearing up for its next job: teaching middle school students this fall.

With the addition of a middle school program, the Redmond charter school — which opened its doors to high schoolers in 2009 — will serve Central Oregon students in grades six through 12.

The middle school won’t offer an exact replica of RPA’s class schedule for high schoolers. RPA’s high school classes tend to meet less frequently than those that follow a standard, hourly schedule, but they last much longer. An RPA course, for instance, might be taught in two 90-minute sessions a week, as many college courses are.

RPA’s middle school day will begin and end when other Redmond School District schools do, said Greg Scott, assistant director of RPA. This will allow RPA students living in the Redmond School District to use the district’s bus service. RPA students living outside the district must find their own transportation to and from school.

“It will be more traditional,” Scott said. “We recognize we can’t create a middle school where a seventh-grader has a class from 8 to 9 and then no class until 11. That’s not going to work.”

Still, RPA aims to have some extended periods of instruction during school days. These might stretch as long as two hours, Scott said.

“What we’re thinking about now is how can we create a schedule where students and teachers can have an ability to have more depth than the traditional bell schedule might allow,” he said.

It’s also possible that RPA’s middle school students will use Wednesdays as an enrichment day for electives.

“We’re trying to brainstorm now what kind of offerings we would have,” Scott said, adding that examples might be art or music.

The learning approach at a proficiency-based school allows students to move to the next level of a given subject as soon as they’ve demonstrated that they’ve mastered the necessary skills. In practical terms, the approach removes several elements of the traditional grading system.

“Instead of doing that, you identify specific skills that students are expected to work on,” Scott said. “You ask the students to demonstrate their mastery of that specifically identified skill so that you’re not focusing on gathering points and percentages of points. You’re actually focusing on the demonstration of skills.”

To outline skills to students, teachers will rely on the Common Core Standards, which 45 states — including Oregon — have adopted. The standards identify specific skills that students in each grade should master.

“It might be multiplying and dividing fractions,” Scott said. “Then kids know, ‘That’s what I’m working on. This is the skill that I’m going to be asked to demonstrate before I move on.’”

Under the proficiency system, students may show their skills and advance steadily regardless of what grade they happen to be in.

“You can be a sixth-grader with the skills of an eighth-grader and take classes with eighth-graders if parents are OK with that,” Scott said. “… In a proficiency environment, it’s really about skill level and ability level. It’s not really about your grade level.”

The middle school classes are an expansion of RPA, not a separate charter school. That distinction allows the middle school students to transfer seamlessly into guaranteed slots in RPA’s high school, Scott said.

The school will start enrolling students on March 15. Up to 150 middle school students from within Redmond School District can attend, and school officials hope to attract about 30 students from outside the district. RPA has 480 students attending its high school classes.

RPA’s middle school students will attend classes in the Hartman building, which the school is leasing from the school district. The building, currently used for Redmond High School freshman classes, won’t be needed by the district when Ridgeview High School opens this fall.