New classes for the new year

School board discusses additional courses for 2019-2020

graphic+by+Holland+Rainwater+

graphic by Holland Rainwater

Story by Ashlyn Winters, staff writer

For the upcoming school year, seven new classes are being added to the Texas High’s course guide and selection sheet. Although the classes are not set in stone yet, they have been carefully picked and designed to meet the interests of the student population. One of the main coordinators who has worked on adding these new changes to the school is Bettie Stark, the Associate Principal for College and Career Readiness.

“We spent a very long time deciding which classes we should add to the course guide and selection sheet because we do want classes that will appeal to most students,” Stark said. “Not each class is the same, [and] there’s a variety of classes being added which would hopefully attract a wide variety of students.”

Classes such as Honors Calculus, Latin III PAP, Mobile App Development, Advanced Floral Design, Livestock Productions DC, Applied Mathematics and Technical Professionals DC are possibilities for the course selection sheet.

“Each year we add a few classes to the selection sheet to open up the students’ options and add a little more variety to the classes,” Stark said. “However, these classes don’t always make the roll because they aren’t selected by enough students. There aren’t enough spots to fill the class, so it gets cancelled.”

Coordinators who collaborated with the school district, Mrs. Pilgreen, will be presenting the choice sheets along with the course guides that give a brief description of each class, during this month.

“The way this works is that every September and October we send out an ‘all call’ to our teachers and department heads,” Pilgreen said. “We ask the teachers if there are any classes that they would like to see added to next school years course guidebook. The teachers will propose classes to us. Those have to be cleared by Mrs. Dupree and the instructional services. We then send the idea to the Board of Education where it can be voted on.”

For the most part, these classes will only be available to upperclassmen who have taken the first course of the prerequisite class. However, there will be a few available options for the upcoming freshman and upperclassmen that do not require a prior course.

“Hopefully, these new classes will make it this year because for most of them they will be the third class added to the sequence,” Pilgreen said. “If upperclassmen decide to take the prerequisite of the class, then they could graduate with a minor on the course. This is good because it would help the student build a career path and make a pathway into what they might want to study in college.”