District to Offer New AP, Biomedical Courses

Three new Advanced Placement (AP) courses and a new biomedical science program will make their debuts at Mehlville and Oakville High Schools in August.

The Mehlville school board unanimously voted to add AP English and Composition, French Language and Culture and Human Geography at each high school starting in the fall of 2012 at its .

Advanced Placement classes offer students college-level courses where they can take a test at the end of the class that earns them college credit if they pass.

The district already offers a high school AP English Literature and Composition class, but the Language and Composition class will have more prose reading with a focus on writing skills.

“With students able to take French I at middle school, we have a need of an advanced French course at the high school level,” said Connie Hurst-Bayless, the assistant superintendent for curriculum. The French course will take a holistic approach to language proficiency and encourages culture as well as language comprehension.

Geography is not offered at either high school at a regular or advanced level so the AP course will be the district’s only geography class.

“This is an exciting twist or difference on human geography. And we have two teachers- one at each high school- very interested in adding this program,” Hurst-Bayless said.

The three AP courses will cost the district a total of $16,423 the first year they are implemented. First year costs include textbooks, instructional materials and videos with a $320 recurring cost for a magazine subscription for the French Language and Culture class.

The district’s costs are after a $1,496 grant from Title II funds that pay for teacher training for the courses.

The Curriculum Department’s goal is to offer 27 our of the 31 total AP classes. The department has added 15 since 2004 and are looking at AP Chemistry, Computer Science and Spanish for the future.

The department weighs teacher interest and skill, along with student interest when considering a new course. Each new offering requires additional preparation and training for teachers and reduces the number of sections of an existing course.

The district also aims to increase its career classes at the high school level by adding a biomedical class.

“We have these bright students, but when they graduate, a lot of them don’t know what they want to do, or they’re not really prepared. A career in technical education prepares them for that future, it sets them on a path,” said Sharri Lange, the district’s director of career and technical education.

“Starting in their freshman year, they pick a program of study and we lay out courses on what they should take every single year that they’re here,” she said.

The biomedical science program is a four-year sequence with four classes designed to prepare students for careers in the healthcare field. The classes focus on hands-on learning with projects that center around real-world medical problems, according to the course description.

The first course, Principles of Biomedical Sciences, will be an elective offered in the fall of 2012. The rest of the courses will be phased in over the following three years.

In the subsequent classes, students will explore human medicine, cell biology, genetics, microbiology and public health. They’ll dissect a heart and explore disease prevention and diagnosis.

“These kids are just going to do remarkable things in this program,” Lange said.

The cost for the first class in the four-year program is $65,600. The district will only pay half the costs ($32,800) because of a 50-50 grant from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. Each year the district adds one of the courses, they will pay from $11,000 to $16,000 for each course.

The fifth year, when all classes are in place, a grant will cover the recurring costs, and the district will pay nothing.

The district is also adding an engineering design and development capstone class that will culminate the engineering courses currently at the high school level.  The students will work in groups to solve an engineering problem with skills they learned in their previous classes.

The class, which cost $4,600 to implement in the first year and $280 for the following years, will be paid for entirely by a grant.

In future years, the department is considering adding a two-year culinary arts program that teaches culinary techniques as well as management skills.

Students will also spend 400 hours in a restaurant where they get paid for their work and earn certifications, enabling them for scholarships and dual credit in culinary schools.

“They can walk into any restaurant and get a job,” Lange said. “It really opens a lot of opportunities plus, if they’re really serious about getting in that industry, it opens the door to the universities.”