By Lauren Farberman
Staff Writer
A Mira Costa subcommittee consisting of Costa faculty members and administrators met on Mar. 20 to finalize its proposal to address student workload and resiliency for the Board to revise, following its Mar 2. report at the Manhattan Beach Unified School District Board of Trustees meeting.
The Costa Ed Council established a subcommittee to address concerns about student workload and resiliency, following a Board workshop on Nov 18. The purpose of the subcommittee is to lower the amounts of student stress at Costa, which was also a focus of the workshop. The subcommittee has representatives from each department on campus and they have met five times.
Once the subcommittee submits a proposal to the Board that is approved, it will be prepared to go into effect for the 2016-2017 school year. It will be treated as a pilot year meaning that the guidelines for teachers to follow will be high recommended rather than required.
“Everything right now is still up for discussion and I still feel we need to revise the proposal in the interest of teachers,” subcommittee member Alan Zeoli said. “It is difficult to tell teachers how to schedule their content which is why the first year will run as a pilot.”
One proposal of the subcommittee’s plan is to limit the number of Advanced Placement courses students can take. According to the proposal, while it is important for students to consider AP courses to demonstrate an ability to handle college level rigor, taking too many can be harmful to a student’s overall wellness. The subcommittee’s proposal limits the number of AP’s a student can take to four per year.
“Since colleges can see how many AP courses a school allows students to take on their college applications, I don’t feel that it presents students with an unfair advantage,” Board Clerk Karen Komatinsky said at the Board meeting.
An additional proposal included balancing student workloads with regulations on homework policies and extracurriculars. Homework would need to be assigned in class, or posted on a teacher’s website by 4:00 pm that day. Homework also cannot be due on Mondays, cannot be worth more than 25% of a student’s grade and will not vary more than 5% in like courses. The proposed policy would also limit extra-curricular and co-curricular workloads to 15 hours a week to ensure students have enough time to complete homework and rest.
“Most of these changes are not drastically different from any teacher’s current homework policy,” Dale said. “These guidelines are meant to make sure that any teacher who is not doing these things will do so within the next school year.”
An unstacked workload is part of the pilot which is where each department will be assigned two days on which papers, exams, projects and presentations can be due. This is in conjunction with bettering student wellness on campus. This year Costa implemented an office hours schedule to give students time to complete school assignments.
“The first year with these guideline in effect, teachers would follow them as more of a strong recommendation than a strict requirement,” Dale said. “If a teacher felt it was in the interest of the students to give a test on a day not assigned to their subject it would be fine to do so.”
The Subcommittee will submit a finalized proposal to the Board at its April 20 meeting where Board members will either accept or deny the proposal. Dale will be presenting the proposal which if approved will be prepared to be implemented into the 2016-2017 school year as a pilot.
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