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By Joanne Lum
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May. 23, 2009 |
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The science department has decided to postpone the offering of a new course until 2010 due to over-enrollments in specific science classes and a shortage of science teachers.
Geology, a new course that was originally arranged to replace earth
science, will not be offered in fall ’09, but in the 2010-11 school
year instead. This deferment is primarily because of the need to assign
science teachers to over-enrolled classes in physiology and physics,
according to physics teacher Scott Dickerman. “Because next year’s
junior class happens to be so large, we were caught without enough
physics teachers,” physics teacher Cy Prothro explained.
Dickerman was intended to teach geology and physics, but he is now
assigned only to physics because of the demand for physics teachers.
“While it’s true we need Mr. Dickerman to cover people who are
interested in taking geology, there wasn’t a strong enough demand this
year,” physics teacher Bryan Cooley said.
Once available, a suitable
number of students will need to sign up for geology in order for the
school to offer it. “We’re trying to give students what they want,”
Cooley said.
Prothro suggested some measures to build enrollment once
geology is on the schedule. “Science teachers and counselors should be
pushing geology as a legitimate science and educating students about
the importance of geology,” he said.
However, another factor that played a significant role in this year’s
postponement of geology was the current economic recession. Limits on
funding hindered the school from hiring more teachers and offering more
courses. “One thing it would take to offer geology is one year without
a budget claim like this year,” Dickerman said. “The current budget
crisis impacts us to offer a wide variety of science courses. We had a
very high demand this year for science courses, and that trend may
continue.”
Students may have been reluctant to sign up for geology when
filling out their course request form because the science department
was still awaiting the approval of geology as a Laboratory Science
course by the University of California, according to Cooley. The
approval is due to happen June, according to Dickerman. Due to the
course’s status, students were not able to plan whether they would be
getting College Preparatory credit or Laboratory Science credit towards
fulfilling their A-G requirements. “If we can get geology classified as
a Lab course, we can at least reassure students who want to take it,”
Cooley said.
After being informed of the issues that caused the
deferral of geology, students who had signed up for this course were
disappointed about the effect of over-enrollments on science classes.
“The fact that over-enrollment in physics is going to cause me and 14
other people to have to drop a class is unfair not only to us, but also
to Mr. Dickerman, who, after all this work towards getting the class
approved, won’t get to teach it,” junior prospective geology student
Thomas Tu said. “It’s extremely unfortunate that the science department
doesn’t even have enough teachers.”
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