SJSD breaks down course offerings between high schools

(St. Joseph, Mo.) St. Joseph School District officials are taking a look at differences in course offerings at the city's three public high schools.

A supporting document presented during February's school board meeting shows Central High School offers more courses, compared to Lafayette and Benton. 

"The reason is because we have more students at Central High School, and so with their enrollment being closer to around 1,600 (students) and the other two high schools not having that population, they're in the 600 range," said Ashly McGinnis, SJSD assistant superintendent of academics. "If you have a student at, let's say Benton or Lafayette, to sign up for one of those honors classes, and you only have six, seven, eight kids who sign up for that class, that oftentimes doesn't make it into being a class."

McGinnis said class sizes at the high school need to have a minimum of 15 kids sign up. 

She also said although students at Benton and Lafayette still have an opportunity to take in advanced placement (AP) or Dual Credit (DC) courses, online learning is not the best educational platform for students. 

"We do have a partnership with some virtual education providers and we are able to offer those courses," McGinnis said. "If they're not offered at Benton or Lafayette and even Central, if there's a course that a child is very interested in, that's an opportunity that we can investigate and research for our kids."

McGinnis said having different academic offerings strewn through the district's three high schools doesn't help with equal opportunities. 

"That's the message that I think is the most important, and just bringing in awareness that, right now we do not offer equal opportunities for our kids among the three high schools as far as coursework and activities," said McGinnis. "We have hopes to clean that up and provide a more fair educational experience to all of our students."

However, with the district's plan to convert to a two-high school model, McGinnis said it would have staffing to be able to fill both buildings.

In the case of the two-high school model, staff would have to be divided among the schools to best serve students.