Although this school year is just beginning, East Aurora District 131 is already looking ahead to the next as it considers some potential new courses it may offer for high schoolers.
Among the possible new offerings are several English and fine arts classes — including a few that can be taken for dual credit — as well as a class in which students seek to launch a business and a course focused on preparing students to take challenging or advanced coursework in high school.
The new courses could be approved by the board at its Sept. 8 meeting.
The proposed new courses, which are being considered for the 2027-28 school year, were discussed at the East Aurora school board’s Curriculum Committee meeting on Monday.
Among the new proposed courses are three dual credit courses: Dual Credit Composition I and II and Dual Credit Speech.
These proposed courses would replace three current senior English offerings — Writer’s Workshop, Rhetoric and Creative Speaking Honors, according to the district presentation at Monday’s committee meeting. All three of the potential new classes are semester-long, one-period courses, and would allow students to earn both high school and college credit.
The high school already has at least three high school faculty that are qualified to teach the composition courses, per the presentation, while possible qualified instructors for the speech course are to be determined.
The composition courses would be for seniors, according to Thomas Skobel, the East Aurora High School’s division chair for English and fine arts, while the speech course would be open to juniors and seniors.
The composition courses are set to cost the district $3,000 for textbooks, according to Monday’s presentation, while the speech course is not set to require any additional costs, and is actually expected to save the district $92 per credit hour per student. This is because the district will save on transportation costs, Skobel said at Monday’s meeting.
Another course the district is looking to offer is Digital Art & Design, which would be a year-long, introductory course for students interested in digital media. It would have no prerequisites, and would be part of a pathway program for arts, audio and technology, Skobel said.
“This is one area where careers within the workforce is increasing,” Skobel said on Monday, “so we want to give our students equitable access to this skill.”
Per the district presentation from Monday, the course would cost the district $1,000 for drawing tablets.
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Another arts course the district is looking at is AP, or Advanced Placement, 2-D Art and Design.
The district already offers other AP studio art courses, Skobel said. But this year-long course would be intended to provide an “AP-level pathway to support the digital design courses” the district offers, per the district presentation.
The course is expected to cost the district $1,000 for photography textbooks, the presentation said.
In addition to these English and arts courses, students interested in business may also have a new course offering available to them.
A proposed year-long course, called ACCelerator, would be meant to follow the district’s existing INCubator course, in which students create and pitch a product, said Lisa Case, the division chair for mathematics and business at the high school. In the suggested new course, students would go on to create a corporation and launch the business they had pitched in the prior course, with help from a local mentor.
The course would also allow students to obtain industry certifications in Certiport Entrepreneurship & Small Business and PMI Project Management Ready, per the presentation.
It’s expected to cost the district $2,750 for an annual subscription fee for the curriculum, the presentation indicated.
Lastly, the district is looking to offer a new elective course called Advancement Via Individual Determination, or AVID, which is meant to help students develop test-taking, note-taking and organizational skills, said Brad Wieher, the high school’s assistant principal for teaching and learning. Some neighboring schools already offer this elective, he said.
The class would be geared toward students who are “right down the middle,” Wieher said — students who are not receiving academic support or interventions, but who also may “not necessarily have the skills to succeed coming into high school … in (an) upper-level course, like an AP class.”
The high school has been participating in AVID training, Wieher said, and uses some AVID strategies already. Because the district already has an AVID yearly membership, the proposed course would not cost the district anything extra, according to Wieher.
Wieher called AVID a “support system” that students apply and are selected for. Students would take an AVID elective course each year alongside their other academic courses, he said, and that group of students often moves through the grade levels together.
Additionally, former students who participated in the program and are in college are often recruited to serve as tutors for students currently in the AVID course, Wieher noted.
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