NORTHFIELD — Amid feedback from students, Pioneer Valley Regional School is working to add more options for honors classes and potentially incorporate schedule changes.
Four Pioneer students took advantage of the public comment period during Thursday’s School Committee meeting to inform members that they want to stay at Pioneer for their high school careers, but they want to be challenged academically.
“Going into high school, I’ve chosen to stay at Pioneer, and one of the big reasons for that is because of all the programs and opportunities that are going to be available,” said eighth grader Hannah Skorupa of Northfield. “I’m really hoping that honors classes will be in the curriculum because I want to be able to challenge myself and learn a lot throughout my high school career. And I’m especially excited to stay because of programs like band and theater and all the other electives I’ve had so much fun with in middle school.”
“I also want to take honors classes to push myself and experience more,” added eighth grader Emma Goulding. “I have enjoyed all the electives that the school has to offer, especially Spanish. I would love to take AP classes in the future.”
The students said the elective classes and programs at the school are great, and they look forward to taking advanced courses at the higher grade levels, but they would like similar opportunities to challenge themselves in ninth and 10th grades as well.
“It would help with getting into colleges that we want to go to, furthering our education,” said Lucianne Burnap, a ninth grader from Bernardston. “We just really want to make sure that this happens and that you can hear that we students do want this in our schools.”
On another note, Lucianne added that students would like to see block scheduling, a system with fewer, longer classes of approximately 90 minutes that alternate each day. Students said they believe it would make scheduling advanced classes easier and would potentially allow students to dive deeper into topics during each class period.
Currently, the school uses a rotating schedule with seven 45-minute class periods that alternate each day. There are full-year and semester-long course options.
Superintendent Patricia Kinsella said Pioneer’s Teaching & Learning Subcommittee is working to incorporate honors classes and hopes to provide the full School Committee with more details at a future meeting, potentially at the next scheduled meeting on March 26.
“The Teaching & Learning Committee had a great conversation. We had hoped to bring you an item at tonight’s meeting, related to possible embedded honors courses at Pioneer next year, but we’re going to need more time,” she said. “And indeed, there’s been a lot of hope and work toward implementing a block schedule at Pioneer. We’re not quite there yet.”
