Significant changes are ahead for students registering for courses in 2000-2001 in Austin Public Schools.

Thursday, December 16, 1999

Significant changes are ahead for students registering for courses in 2000-2001 in Austin Public Schools.

Julie Espe, Austin High School principal, explained the sweeping changes to the Austin Board of Education on Wednesday.

She praised everyone who helped determine which courses would be deleted, added or modified, saying, "Everyone worked together."

The on-going budget adjustments being made to help curb deficit spending in the district made it "very tough to look at curriculum," Espe told the school board members.

Also, the juggling act school officials must perform to meet graduation requirements and students’ own choices for post secondary education degrees continues to haunt the curriculum process.

Four agriculture and natural resources pathway courses will be deleted, including crop science, agricultural mechanics, agribusiness management and agriculture leadership development, while introduction to agri-science will be modified.

The courses being deleted did not have significant interest for more than five years.

Also deleted will be art and life skills, because of overlaps in curriculum content with other courses.

Four business courses will be deleted, but two added. They are self-paced business course and PC applications.

Another business course, word processing will be modified into a semesterlong course.

Engineering and technology courses will see a student-directed production graphics course added, the drafting course modified by combining two basic courses into one yearlong course and graphic communication deleted.

Four family and consumer science courses will be deleted as well as journalistic writing and mass communications. The writing course is being combined with publications and the mass communications course content is overlapped in other courses.

Lack of significant student interest was blamed for deleting the family and consumer science courses. Five math courses, algebra/geometry plus tutorial, geometry "B", computer applications I and 446 computer applications II, math applications, advanced algebra "B: and algebra/geometry plus III.

Either the courses were dropped because they over-lapped with others or they were considered not "rigorous enough" to meet the Minnesota Graduation Standards.,

Also being dropped, according to the principal’s report, is music theory which also has not had significant interest, two physical education courses. Three other physical education courses will be added.

Also being added will be environmental studies and honors chemistry, while advanced chemical studies, ecology and astronomy and chemistry in the community are being dropped.

An honors American history I course will be added because it offers "more challenge" than the standard curriculum. That was also the reason given for adding an advanced placement human geography course.

Current world issues does not meet the Minnesota Graduation Standards and will be dropped next year.

Candace Raskin, director of educational services, worked with Espe to review the course listings. She said "performance" courses are the problem area in determining what works and what doesn’t work in high school curriculum.

Five of the new courses being added meet Graduation Standards requirements.

Dick Lees, a school board member, said if high school courses are to be considered "career pathways" to prepare students for the next step toward higher education or employment, "I wonder if the Graduation Standards are really opening post secondary doors for the student."

"Are we forcing students to take courses they don’t need?" Lees asked.

Espe said her role as high school principal is to "strike a balance" between state-requirements and post-secondary educational institutions’ own requirements.

The director of educational services also underlined the fine balance that must be sought when preparing curriculum offerings.

Raskin observed, "When we add something to the curriculum, something else must go."

The school board members unanimously approved the changes, which will be published in a new AHS course guide to be made available to students registering for year 2000-2001 classes.