The start of every school year is marked by a flurry of students changing classes, dropping classes, and fighting for spots in coveted courses. Select online courses have been canceled due to recent budget cuts, intensifying this phenomenon.
Many students rely on these online courses to meet credit requirements while making time for extracurriculars and other classes. David He (11) has taken virtual classes consistently every year but found it particularly difficult to make it into online U.S. History this year.
“Recently, I’ve been really disappointed in how hard it is to get into [online courses],” He said. “I’ve definitely had problems getting into them, especially this year with online U.S. History.”
He was eventually able to get a spot in the class, but other students continued to have schedule issues.
Although students are still able to sign up for these classes, their limited availability has been beyond Westview’s control. The limited availability of courses can be attributed to the district’s recent budget cuts.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a very limited number of spots in Civics, U.S. History, and World History for Westview students. Enrollment was decided through a lottery system. However, funding increased during the pandemic, allowing for more online classes to become available.
“It was very open,” counselor Vanessa Ho said. “For the past four years since COVID, they would just make new sections for any students who needed a spot. But because of recent budget cuts and COVID funding ending, sections were limited again.”
The limiting of spots in virtual courses boils down to a few reasons.
“There’s not enough enrollment and budget,” Ho said. “There are also five different high schools who are trying to build master schedules and accommodate their students, and there’s only one central person who is managing [alternative education] at the district level.”
At the district level, a tier system is used to determine which courses should be kept or dropped, said Patty Hurtt, director of PUSD’s alternative education department.
“They organize the programs into three tiers,” Hurtt said. “It’s based on student need, the expense of the program per student, and if there is a return on their money in those areas. [After taking those three things into consideration] they decide amongst themselves which ones [are] going to [be] put on the chopping block.”
In order to save money, the district had to take other steps, including reducing the pay of Poway To Palomar Middle College (PPMC) teachers who teach virtual courses.
“We normally pay teachers 25% on top of their salary that they are already making, but to save that money, teachers at PPMC are teaching the courses but they’re not getting that extra bump in their pay,” Hurtt said.
Although the number of online U.S. History and E-commerce courses was reduced from two classes each to one each, the administration is already adapting. Just this year, Westview opened its own online Civics and Econ section, taught by a Westview teacher instead of one from the district.
“Opening the Civics and Econ course really helped because that would have been 40 more students who had to figure out how to get a class here on campus,” Ho said. “I think our admin’s ability and willingness to look at solutions outside of the box and try out online courses is important because we have never really done that before besides our online Health class.”
According to Ho, it also helps for more students to express their desire for more online courses. Ho said she hopes that the rise in popularity of taking community college courses, most of which are virtual, will show students that they can learn effectively in online classes as well.
“Our students have to know whether or not they can be successful in online courses,” she said, “so maybe we will see more students who are interested if we can show that [online courses] can be successful.”
