There will be some changes to some class offerings at Warsaw Community High School and the Warsaw Area Career Center in the 2020-21 school year as the Warsaw Community Schools Board learned during its meeting Tuesday.
WCHS Principal Troy Akers gave a synopsis of changes to the health, physical education, science and social science departments.
The health and physical education department will not be adding any new classes to its curriculum, Akers said. However, the department will be rotating its Philosophy of Coaching course and renaming it to Sports Studies. The department will be deleting its Women’s Fitness course due to lack of interest and need.
The science department will be adding a peer tutoring science – elementary dissection series course.
While Akers didn’t give definitive changes to the social studies department, he did talk about future issues that the social studies department will look into. Those issues include offering a geography course and the department looking at its AP course offerings, as well as offering AP World A for freshmen and AP World B for sophomores.
Jill Jackson, assistant director of WACC, reported on the course changes that will be take place at the career center during the 2020-21 school year.
The agricultural department will be renaming several courses, including Natural Resources Management to Natural Resources, Advanced Life Science: Plants to Advanced Life Science: Plants and Soil and Supervised Ag Experience to Supervised Agricultural Experience.
The Business, Marketing and Information Technology Education department possibly will delete its global economics course. It will add a personal finance course and possibly make it mandatory.
Dani Barkey, WCS communications and accountability officer, talked about the weighted grade system that will be used.
There will be three tiers: a 5-point scale, a 4.5-point scale and a 4-point scale. Students who complete the full year of an AP course with a C- or higher and take the assessment will be graded on the 5-point scale. Students who complete courses that have been approved as honors with a C- or higher will be graded on a 4.5 scale. The 4-point scale will be used on all foundational-level courses.
Barkey said when defining what will be an honors course, the course must have at least two of three requirements. Those are the course must have two required prerequirements as identified in the course of study guide, have one required prerequisite course that was a dual credit or AP course and courses that utilize guidelines established by the placement of students.
Barkey said an honors level will not be offered if there is a dual credit or AP level for that course.
In other business, Board President Heather Reichenbach, Board Vice President Randy Polston and Board Secretary Jeremy Mullins will keep their positions for 2020.
