An accelerated system
Beyond health and remedial classes, LCC and TPHS students will be able to take basic English, math, science and social science classes online.
These classes will not include honors or Advance Placement, and science courses will be limited to courses that do not require lab work, said Grove. Electives will not be offered.
With LCC and TPHS students offered the ability to take accelerated classes, they can now catch up to the four by four system of SDA, allowing them to take more classes in a year than. Accelerated classes will help students at those schools compete with top universities by allowing them to have more of a variety in classes, said Grove.
“The four by four schedules [that Academies run on] is usually the number one reason students want to go to [SDA],” said Grove. The four by four schedules allows for students to take eight classes a year, not including quarter classes, while at schools like LCC and TPHS, students can only take six.
Because LCC and TPHS students are only allowed six classes a year, four of which tend to be core classes, their schedules do not allow for much movement, said Grove.
Having the ability to offer more classes to students at LCC and TPHS will also help raise their enrollment numbers, which currently are lower than SDA’s, said Grove.
SDA will not be offering these accelerated courses, which are courses from core subjects, “for two reasons,” said Grove. “[Accelerated online courses] is really a pilot program. They just want to make sure it runs smoothly first,” said Grove.
Additionally, Grove expressed that there is not a large need for online accelerated classes at a four-by-four schedule school. Because students at SDA are able to take more classes then schools like LCC and TPHS, SDA students do not have a need for online classes.
Despite SDA not currently having accelerated classes, Grove said they may become available in a few years.