- East Penn School Board heard presentations about upcoming curriculum changes at its meeting Monday
- Many curriculum changes featured the ability to earn college credit, along with new arts, tech and math courses
- The board also recognized high-scoring students and agreed to a new contract for an assistant superintendent
EMMAUS, Pa. — East Penn School District presented some new changes and additions to next year's curriculum at its school board meeting Monday, giving a nod to anticipated changes in the math, business and arts departments.
Also at the meeting, Assistant Superintendent Douglas Povilaitis got a new contract, and more than a dozen students were recognized for academic achievements related to the PSAT exam.
Povilaitis' contract is for five years, ending November 2028, with a first-year salary of $168,550 with no future increase to exceed 5% from the last year's salary.
It also establishes an annual performance evaluation.
Revised curriculum
Mike Mihalik, a Secondary STEM Supervisor at the district, presented to board members with anticipated changes to the school's curriculum, including new classes.
One of the most noted changes is the shifting of Personal Financial Management from one credit to 0.5 credits, with the goal to let more students to take the course.
That's because the district has "many students that request PFM each year and do not get it in their schedules," and sees it as a beneficial course to acquire the skills involved before graduating, the board was told.
The course still has dual credit opportunity with Lehigh Carbon Community College.
There will be some revisions, with the core of the course creating and operating a personal budget, bank accounts and examining various major financial factors such as debt, housing and retirement.
Mihalik noted that more than 400 students on average requested it in the past few years, and cutting the time the course takes would let them better meet demand, albeit at the hit of some instructional depth.
"You've got to weigh the pros and cons," Mihalik said. "We really like a lot more students to be able to have this opportunity.
"And to be honest, if this is something where we realized that there's more out there that we should be teaching our kids, that could be a new course."
School Board member Alisa Bowman said, "It shows that there's some word of mouth advertising going on where they see the value in it. So I'm hoping that by cutting down to half a credit that they're not losing some of the value in that class."
A new course, Foundations of Art, will be a 0.5-credit, entry-level art course combines and replaces the 2D and 3D foundations of art courses to give students exposure to both.
School administration said it will let more students get further pathways to advanced level art courses.
Stage design is a new 0.5-credit tech ed course that collaborates with the arts to teach the engineering and design skills with the specific technical and arts aspects of theater.
Presenters discussed that the sets may be used in school productions, but will not necessarily be linked with the high school's theater.
In math, Intermediate Algebra will replace the former Math Analysis course. It uses the LCCC EdReady software, with the need to pass a placement test to get the dual credit part of the class in spring.
Presenters saidthe goal is to help students in the course enter community college without having to pay to take remedial math courses.
Some courses will not be significantly altered, but were discussed because of plans to have the courses count for dual credit with LCCC.
They include Entrepreneurship (to count as BUS 248 credit), Intro to Probability and Statistics (to count as Prob/Stats MAT 150 credit), Precalculus CP (to count as College Algebra MAT 160), Calculus CP (to count as Business Calculus MAT 188) and Advanced Topics (to count as Calculus 3 MAT 210).
Science courses likely will be recommended next year to match new standards.
Board member Paul Champagne encouraged looking for more opportunities for transfer credit for trade and technical schools, in addition to community college.
Emmaus High School Principal Beth Guarriello also discussed coming changes to the high schools' program of studies, which includes the guides to the school's course selection and placement processes, student requirements, department explanations, mission statements and various messages to parents seeking to understand the how the school works.
Guarriello said many of the changes are date changes that come year to year along with adding additional information regarding the class drop/add process.
It also adds sections for special education services and programs and other clarifications. The document draft received various comments from the board members about omissions and suggestions.
Students recognized
The board took time Monday to congratulate more than a dozen students.
Benjamin Wiese was recognized as a semifinalist for the 2024 National Merit Scholarship, a distinction given to less than 1% of high school students in the country.
About 34,000 students across the country also were commended by the PSAT program, including more than a dozen at East Penn.
They included Aidan Arakkal, Ryan Baig, Madison Carreiro, Elijah Daly, Kayla DiGiacomo, Aidan Doyle, Tyler Finck, Chase Gravereaux, Jeremy Lam, Ogonna Nnodimele, Thomas Seislove, Sarvesh Senguttuvan, Henry Stewart, Angela Tran, and Hugh Wilks.
The annual academic competition is for university scholarships and national recognition.
