Glenbrook High School District 225 board members are poised to approve a slew of new courses for the 2016-17 school year, including a “business incubator” class for budding entrepreneurs.
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The class, “Entrepreneurship Business Incubator,” would be a joint effort by Glenbrook North and South high schools – a yearlong class for sophomores and juniors to conceptualize and develop an idea, apply knowledge of business concepts to real-life business planning, and ultimately pursue funding by pitching their ideas to advisers and venture capital outlets.
Board members on Monday were intrigued by the business incubator class, but Robert Boron and Joel Taub asked whether intellectual property rights for any student-developed idea that might take off would stay with the student or District 225.
Many universities retain property rights to ideas developed by professors and students, Taub said, asking whether District 225 should do likewise.
“I’m very excited about the incubator,” he added. “I just want to make sure that whoever’s responsible, whoever has the property rights, it’s appropriate to the entire school environment.”
Superintendent Mike Riggle and Rosanne Williamson, assistant superintendent for education services, said that decision is up to board members.
The business incubator class would cost $20,000 per school in the first year, which includes a $5,000 annual fee for the program, but would not require any additional full-time staff, said Dawn Hall, instructional supervisor at Glenbrook South.
That annual fee allows teachers to learn how to teach the program and stay up to date with its developments, Hall said.
Along with the business incubator, Glenbrook North would add a “Child Development-Teaching Internship,” identical to the class already offered at Glenbrook South, and re-instate “AP Computer Science.”
“AP English Language and Composition” would be offered in junior instead of senior year, while “AP Physics” would be renamed as “AP Physics C,” since it uses calculus. Two architecture courses would be dropped because they overlap with “Project Lead the Way” courses.
Glenbrook South would add two new courses: “Game Design 2” (already offered at Glenbrook North) and “Geometry in Construction,” combining the standard geometry math course with real-world applications of geometry as students would build a structure on district property; tag “Advanced Accounting” as an honors course; rename “Sociology: Marriage and Family” to “Sociology: Human Relationships” and drop the sociology course “Behavior and Crime.”
Approval of the new courses is currently scheduled for the board’s Jan. 25 meeting. It will be on the “consent” agenda – a list of items that are considered routine and approved in one vote unless a board member asks for an item to be removed.
New courses and changes to the curriculum are vetted at each high school by department committees, instructional supervisor curriculum councils and principals before they reach the District 225 office, where they are reviewed again before being sent to the school board.
“Each year, district administrators and teachers evaluate 20 percent of course offerings and make recommendations to revise and enhance the curriculum,” Williamson said in a news release issued Monday after the board’s discussion. “Conducting an annual course review helps the district maintain the comprehensive and rigorous array of course offerings our school community expects of the Glenbrooks.”
Jon Davis is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.