Mira Costa Administration alters marching band student’s schedules

By Ellie Shalvarjian

Staff Writer

The administration will implement a policy in the 2016-17 school year that will prevent marching band students with a 0-6 period to gain PE credit from marching band, which is a 7th period class.

This new policy will make it so marching band is no longer shown as a course but instead is shown as an extracurricular. This was a response to the anti-stress plan the administration is working to implement at Costa. However, it was additionally thought of as a way to increase the ability to have the same amount of opportunities among students, Carlson said. The idea was that kids with a 0-7 period would be taking an extremely rigorous course load, administration created the policy so that less students would have a desire to take a 0-7 schedule, band director Joel Carlson said.

“The student health and wellness is important so I think it was kind of a no-brainer to the administration that they needed to implement this schedule change,” Carlson said. “Since many other students at the school don’t have the privilege to take eight periods this was somewhat unfair for us to have this, so taking away the ability to have eight periods makes it so all students have equal chances.”

While the new schedule change does help reduce the amount of student stress, by forcing students to take less classes, there have been several students whose four year plans were inconvenienced, according to Carlson. The students have voiced concerns against the policy to the administration since they no longer have enough room in their schedules to take their required or desired courses while still receiving PE credit from marching band.

“It’s beyond unfair that the administration is inconveniencing us by making us have to find other places to get PE credit,” sophomore Carisma Leyva said. “In the effort to make students less stressed, admin is making us more stressed by forcing us to find other locations where we can take the necessary classes.”

The new plan will become active next school year and after next year, might be replaced with a different solution if the administration comes up with a better plan. However, for the 2015-16 year students with a 0-6 and marching band will sign up for marching band as if it is an extracurricular outside of school.

“I am hopeful that it will relieve student stress, but I really didn’t try to sway the decision one way or another since it’s a little above my expertise,” Carlson said. “In the end I think that the administration thought that this was the best idea for the time being in terms of relieving of stress and fairness.”