High schools to update business courses

As published in the Record Journal Thursday December 6, 2012

By Andrew Ragali
Record-Journal staff

WALLINGFORD — Four new courses will be offered at the high school level as electives next fall.

The Board of Education curriculum committee has added Web Tools, Web Design for Business, and International Business and Finance to the business curriculum, as well as Robotics to the technology curriculum. Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction Ellen Cohn said the new classes are replacing courses that have become outdated or redundant.

“Clearly, what education in general is facing and, in Wallingford, we have kids in a very rapidly changing world,” Cohn said. “A lot of our elective classes overtime will have to change.”

To make room for the new courses, Cohn said Beginner Keyboarding and Intermediate Keyboarding won’t be offered next year, but “replicated in the curriculum at an earlier level.”

“Those classes are moving down to the middle school and elementary school level,” she said.

Another course, Principles of Management, won’t be offered next year because it has too much overlap with another class, Business 101.

Board Chairman Roxane McKay said the new classes won’t cost the school district any extra money. “We already have teachers competent and capable” to teach them, she said.

“We want to be the most current and make sure we are offering courses that are interesting and relevant to students,” McKay said.

Keyboarding classes at the high school level aren’t appropriate anymore, McKay said. She said she thinks students should already understand the basics of typing by the time they get into high school.

Cohn said Wallingford is past due in introducing students to robotics, and that “teachers are anxious to begin teaching it.”

The specific content of the new courses hasn’t been determined yet, but Cohn said the task will begin immediately, now that the school board has approved them. McKay said information for the new courses will be included in course selection books provided to students in late winter or early spring when course signups for the following school year begin.