The Governing Board of the Benicia Unified School District approved five new Benicia High School courses— advanced engineering design, basic welding and automotive, Construction & Building Trades 1, introduction to medical careers, and yoga— and held two— physics of the universe and “Get Focused”— for further discussion at Thursday’s meeting.

Dr. Leslie Beatson, the assistant superintendent of educational services, presided over the discussion of the new courses. She immediately requested pulling physics of the universe, a required course for 9th-graders, from that night’s agenda because she wanted it to be agendized for the June 15 meeting when proposed pathways for the science courses as well as California’s Next Generation Science Standards will be discussed. She then introduced Benicia High Principal Brianna Kleinschmidt to go over the other courses. She described the basic welding and automotive course as the first course in a two-part pathway that also serves to resurrect a previous long-time Career Technical Education (CTE) course.

“We used to have an auto shop program,” she said. “It was very popular, and that went away for a few years, so we’re happy to be bringing it back.”

Kleinschmidt said the new automotive technology course would be more aligned with the CTE pathway than the previous course, it would also bring in newer technologies and more of a career focus.

“Students get not only basic automotive instruction but also welding instruction, so if they’re looking to go into other careers maybe outside of automotive, it’s a skill they can bring with them to that field as well,” she said.

The school hired Steve Shields to teach the course, and he has been working on the course outlines and revamping the auto shop classroom with new technology.

Kleinschmidt said Shields would be teaching another new CTE course, Construction & Building Trades 1. Much like basic welding and automotive, Kleinschmidt said the new construction course would be taking a previously offered class— in this case, wood shop— and taking it to a new level.

Specifically, she said the course would have a “focus in commercial and residential construction and all aspects of what that is, from carpentry to plumbing to HVAC to framing so that students have that first course out of a two-course pathway that can take them into an apprenticeship, internship or college if they want to pursue education in that field as well.”

Another new course is advanced engineering design, which is a complementary course to engineering, computer programming and robotics. Other new courses included intro to medical careers— in which students learn about the anatomy of the human body and apply it to the health care field— and yoga, which can be used to satisfy an elective or a second-year physical education requirement and will be taught by dance teacher Samantha Sanchez.

The final new course was titled “Get Focused…Stay Focused,” a required course for 9th-graders that aims to help students learn skills to prepare them for college and careers. Kleinschmidt said the course was piloted this year as a semesterlong accompaniment to the healthy living course with two cohorts of 9th-graders.

“The feedback we received was that it just wasn’t enough time to get through the curriculum, and they were kind of speeding through those really important areas,” she said.

As a result, the school decided to offer it for a full year starting in 2017-18. Although “Get Focused” would take the place of the current healthy living course, Kleinschmidt said some of the components would be carried over, and there would be talk of introducing some of the healthy living concepts even earlier.

“There’s been some discussion about taking the current healthy living class and separating that into modules so that that content can be delivered starting at sixth grade and continuing through 9th grade so that hopefully it can be more effective for students before they get to the high school,” she said. “We’re finding that some of the content for healthy living might be more useful at an earlier age, as far as teachers teaching them about some of the dangers that face them as adolescents and possibly preventing some of those activities.”

To prepare for “Get Focused,” Kleinschmidt took a team of teachers and counselors to a training at Berkeley High School, where the program is also being implemented.

“The teachers came to this with a clean slate,” she said. “Only one of those teachers had been to a training before, and when we all left they were really excited. They had a theme for how we were going to kick off the year next year, a guest speaker booked and were just really excited about coming together from different areas of expertise— from healthy living, social science, arts and computer tech— to bring together this curriculum that can really apply, no matter what the student is looking at for their future career choices.”

As “Get Focused” is a required course but is also listed in the course catalog as satisfying a UC elective requirement, Trustee Peter Morgan asked Kleinschmidt about the philosophy for mandating electives.

“I understand the argument that once it’s required, it’s no longer an elective,” she said. “The UC system still calls it an approved college prep elective. They have a category ‘g’ for that and are looking for a certain number of elective credits. While we might require it, under their categorization, it still might be considered an elective course.”

Kleinschmidt said “Get Focused” was brought to the board after receiving feedback from counselors, parents and teachers that some students may need to learn how to find their careers and research possibilities. The goal, she said, was to have “space within our education of our students to educate them on what they need to do to be successful in their choices.”

Morgan asked if the school solicited parent or student feedback in the implementation of new courses. Kleinschmidt said that many courses did not require feedback, particularly CTE pathway courses which already had guidance for curriculums. Most of the outreach, she said, came from looking at student clubs and gauging student interest.
The school offered a choir class next year, but it was cancelled after not receiving enough student signups.

Trustee Celeste Monnette requested that “Get Focused” be pulled from the approval for that evening.

“I feel like I need more information,” she said. “It doesn’t make sense to me to have a mandated elective that would take away from a core subject like the arts and music. I need a better way to understand this before I can vote on it.”

Kleinschmidt said it would not take the place of an elective.

“Currently, we have one period in the freshman schedule that’s the healthy living requirement and a different semester that is an elective,” she said. “What it does is take that space in their schedule as a freshman essentially.”

Kleinschmidt also clarified that “Get Focused” would not be the same as the semester long “Freshman Success” course that was introduced in 2009 and offered for a few years to help freshmen be prepared for high school.

Morgan expressed concerns that while the material would be helpful for certain students, it may not be helpful to be a required course for every student. Trustee Stacy Holguin suggested that it might be helpful to provide case studies of schedules.

“It would be beneficial to say ‘This is what a typical schedule looks like now, this is what it looked like in the past,’” she said. “I’m hearing people say that with more information, we need to review that again.”

The board unanimously voted to approve the new courses, with the exceptions of “Get Focused” and physics of the universe, which would be brought back for discussion at the June 15 meeting.

In other business, the board heard the initial sunshine agreement for the district’s proposal for 2017-18 negotiations with the Benicia Teachers Association. It was also an evening of awards. Benicia High and Benicia Middle School were presented with Gold Ribbon Awards by Marnie Lynch, the Solano County Office of Education’s educational services director. Benicia High math teacher Lee Anne Aidt and Benicia Middle School campus supervisor Angie Porter were named as Solano County certificated and classified educators of the year by County Supervisor Monica Brown. Porter was also named as a Classified School Employee of the Year by State Superintendent Tom Torlakson. Finally, Benicia High science teacher Brad Upton was honored by the Benicia Tree Foundation for allowing students to do volunteer work for the organization.

The board will next meet on Thursday, June 15.