Mia Cho
Staff Writer
he Manhattan Beach Unified School District Social Emotional Wellness Committee made recommendations for changes in policy at Costa at the MBUSD school board meeting on Dec. 12 after the board hosted a work- shop. While a step in the right direction to improve students’ social emotional wellness, the new recommendations ultimately limit students.
The Social Emotional Wellness committee (SEW) introduced their list of plans which intend to offer a “climate of care” at Costa. These options include: weighing honors classes to count toward students’ grade point averages, limiting the amount of Advanced Placement classes students can take to three each year, and only allowing five AP classes total over a high school career.
In addition to their plans for a climate of care, they proposed a replacement bell schedule that would make room for more classes during the school year to reduce the need for summer school courses, and ceasing to give credit for outside summer school Hon- ors or AP courses. With this new recommendation, grades in these summer school courses will not be published on student’s transcripts.
The SEW committee made the recommendations during a highly attended workshop they hosted on Dec. 5. in response to increased stress levels among students, according to the Board agenda. Citing a Challenge Success student survey in February of 2017, the committee said there may be a benefit in placing a cap on AP classes to two per year. Although many students are worried about the significant weight that AP classes have on a college application, colleges would be notified of Costa’s limit on APs, and AP exams aren’t required on applications.
While the board may disagree, students who decide to take AP or honors classes at Mira Costa should be able to make their own decisions in balancing their work load. Students should evaluate which AP classes are right for them, and they should have the right to challenge themselves academically. Although taking too many AP courses has the potential of negatively affecting students’ social emotional wellness, the benefits of taking AP courses out- weigh the negatives, and students can always drop courses when the workload becomes too cumber- some. Students who take AP classes are highly attractive to colleges as they are prepared for the level of academic rigor they will experience in college. Colleges value the rigor of a student’s academic schedule and take each student’s high school courseload into ac- count in the application process.
Students who plan to apply to selective universities will be at a disadvantage with the SEW committee’s recommendation. In order to compete with the hundreds of thousands of applicants from schools all across the country, many feel that it is imperative to take APs to maintain a competitive GPA. In addition to this, students who score highly on AP exams can receive credit for college courses, allowing them to save money and graduate faster. According to a study conducted by the US Department of Education, the average time to earn a bachelor’s degree for students who had taken AP classes during high school was six months shorter than those who did not.
Changes in the limit of AP clases would handicap students who are capable of pushing themselves. The increasingly competitive nature of the college application process has already induced enough stress in the Costa student body, so why enforce a cap on courses in the first place? Instead, if SEW is concerned with students overloading on AP courses, they should focus on providing assistance for those students struggling in these courses by providing tutors or an easier way to transfer out of a course.
The committee should allow students to make their own deci- sions in regards to their schedule, as it will affect their preparedness for college and the future.
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