Lexington (MA) High School Senate

LEXINGTON HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT-FACULTY SENATE

2002-2003

Moderator Muhammad Dhanani, Assistant Moderator Lawrence J. David, Secretary J.T. Scarry

<http://lhs.lexingtonma.org/senate>

Agenda

For the October 10, 2002 meeting

1. Announcements

2. Committee Reports

3. Informal Discussion of Course Requirements

4. Informal Discussion of Override Issue

Minutes

From the September 19, 2002 meeting:

Quorum reached at 7:49 AM.

Harper: The minutes for the previous session have me saying "are not seen as a draconian imposition" but I believe that I said "are seen as a draconian imposition."

Dhanani: There has been a motion to reconsider the minutes.

David: I would like to change my statement from "‚Ä¶it is not fair to put the Science Department‚Ä¶" to "‚Ä¶it is not fair to put the members of the Science Department‚Ä¶"

Kafrissen: He cannot just change what he said because he misspoke.

David: That is not a change.

Scarry: While we are addressing errors in the minutes, please note that Senator Kafrissen's name was spelled incorrectly.

[Amended Minutes Approved, 7:54]

[Agenda Approved, 7:54]

Announcements

Girondel: I have the key to the filing cabinet in which the condoms are kept. The Social Action Committee should come and get them.

Vachani: Responsibility for access to the condoms does not lie with the Social Action Committee.

Dhanani: Former Senator S. Girondel, of the Social Action Committee, took a large role due to the low interest in the Condom Committee. The Communications Committee should advertise to arouse more interest.

Committee Reports

Rehman: Oversight has met twice. We were concerned that few people know about the Board of Appeals. We need to get more publicity so that people know about it.

Lessin: Climate Committee met. We discussed the parking lottery; we may want to integrate a system for bidding in its stead. We also brought up a bill to put a median class grade back on report cards.

Gingrande: Policy has met twice. We have under consideration one bill to put the median grade back on the report card, and another bill to give Guidance a rotating seat on the Senate.

Vachani: Social Action has met twice. We are in the process of deciding how to interpret the community service requirements.

Scarry: The Communications Committee has met twice. We are attempting to create a set of guidelines to address Dr. Seasholes's concerns while staying true to the Senate bill mandating announcements. We also discussed creation of posters to spark interest in Senate and the issues under debate in the Senate.

Informal Discussion of Graduation Requirements

Dhanani: We do have Ms. Bradley here for this discussion, as well as Ms. Collins of the School Council. A guidance counselor may come.

Vogelzang: I learned that I have twenty-eight arts credits in a guidance seminar. If you like something you will pursue it. The only issue was that because of physics, I could not fit history into my schedule, so I will have to do an independent study. If there were more senior electives, especially in the sciences, for people like me who do not understand science, it would improve the situation. In terms of the art and gym requirements, people will take what they like. You can take two drama classes, or art classes, or music. This is not too high a standard.

Kafrissen: I would like to remind the students that we are a high school, not a college; we do not want you to major in a single subject. The high school offers a variety of choices, to allow students to make a choice later in life about what interests them. Last week it became clear that the principal wanted to change graduation requirements, but what did he want to see?

Halperin: I would like to hear Ms. Bradley address the order in which the sciences are taught at our high school. The order is different at different high schools.

Interim Science Department Head Bradley: The order is largely a historical accident. There is a movement to put baby physics in [as an underclass course], but the problem is that the math required for higher level physics is hard to do without having taken the relevant math courses. The same argument of needing to wait for the math skills goes for chemistry as well. The amount of chemistry needed for biology is actually extremely small. The same cannot be done with chemistry and physics.

Zimmerman: It is true that people will take the courses that they like, and if you have a set number of courses that you like. If you have a program available, students will take it. In any year, I personally cannot take any electives other than art classes because of the specific requirements.

Dhanani: Dr. Seasholes was pleased with our discussion. However, we must clarify the distinction between Graduation and Course Distribution requirements; my understanding is that the total number of credits needed for graduation, which are the Graduation Requirements, are not under discussion so much as the Course Distribution Requirements. I would like to point out that there were suggestions made to ease the imposition of classes on students, thus freeing up ten credits, and Senator Bogart discussed the application of classes to more than one departmental requirement. Dr. Seasholes appealed to the students specifically, as he wants to hear from those suffering under these requirements.

Inouye: I agree with what has been said, but that is not the point. It is important for everyone, even those who are unmotivated, to get a taste of everything. It gets a little extreme, and it feeds into the mentality that high school is just about getting into college. I don't enjoy most of my classes. I would propose that science, though keeping the double blocks, only have four class sessions per week.

Enders: I agree with Senator Inouye. As honors classes are oversubscribed, lower level classes have students who really, really want to leave the room, and others who love the subject but do not want the work. Physics fears undersubscription of their courses, but because students here are academic and students are under academic pressure, and thus there is no need to fear that these classes will be undersubscribed.

Ivria Fried: I also agree with Senator Inouye, but I have one point to add; by allowing everyone to play the field, take different classes, we discover who we are, but by reducing classes we cannot find out who we are at this moment.

Vogelzang: Moderator Dhanani mentioned the idea of ten open credits. I think that if we left it at 104 credits needed to graduate and had ten credits left open, it would make less sense than reducing the actual requirements. It would definitely be hard to make schedules. There is something to be said for requiring certain classes, and removal of the requirements could be abused. I should have more faith in the student body, but I do not. Senator Girondel mentioned the issue of the 'one extra credit' in science, which I feel is important.

Richardson: If Senator Inouye [and other students like her] didn't take classes that she didn't like, I would be free to design classes that she did.

Kaffrissen: I notice that there is a lot of dissent about science, and would like to hear Ms. Bradley defend the Science Department.

Interim Science Department Head Bradley: The major reason for having the four distinct courses is that science, unlike other courses, is fragmented. There is not a great deal of carryover from preceding courses. Little of the first three courses taught at this school will give you a good grasp of what physics are all about. You can look at it as a social science course, or from various other perspectives, but not taking physics leaves one a quarter short of one's total view of science. If does not take biology, one have lost a major body of knowledge that explains how one can do something pretty complicated like read the Boston Globe. One would end up in college with limited choices, and one cannot make up this gap in college. As for why we offer no electives; ten or fifteen years ago, we had electives, but the money got tight, the staffing got tight, and with no influx of money coming in we decided that we needed to concentrate on the core subjects, not the electives.

Shield: One comment kept being made: taking all four sciences gives you a different view of the world. Why are we focusing on science, when the problem is mainly math? By the time you get to the third year of mathematics most students are taking precalculus, and few need a more advanced version of it. Level I students are saying that they do not want to use calculus, and probably never will use calculus. The fourth year is not critical.

Catsouphes: In response to Senator Enders' comment a while ago; her comments that 'Level I students don't want to be there', and then that we are 'all academic' are contradictory. We are very academically inclined [in the Senate] and elitist, but many kids want to take the easy way out. Not everyone wants to go on to college. Putting our faith in everyone being able to make his or her own choices is wrong. This is a chance to get to know your academic self, to get to know yourself. We don't want people to later regret their choices and think "I wish I had taken this‚Ä¶", never knowing whether they would have been interested in a subject. Senior year can be a year of college preparation, but freshman, sophomore, and junior year require guidance.

Shield: I move to end the discussion.

[Motion fails]

Ivria Fried: I love science, and I feel that I need a physics class. In New York City they start with Earth Science in eighth grade, and have an elective senior year, but that is not possible here. As for whence we could obtain ten free credits, some people do not need trigonometry. It could become an elective.

Williams: I would like to suggest that Ms. Bradley is wrong. If I had to do this in the Math Department, I would combine Algebra and Geometry into a single course. Science could similarly make a biochemistry course, giving students more freedom.

Bogart: I do not want to take away Physics, but four and a half years is just too much. Senator Inouye has helped us keep in mind that this is about student identity as much as about education.

[Senate adjourns with the bell]

List of Senators Absent from the September 12, 2002 Meeting

Senator Coughlin

Senator Law

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Suggestions Made During the Informal Discussion for the Reform of LHS Course Distribution Requirements

The following are the nine discrete suggestions for changing the Course Distribution Requirements that have been made in the Senate. Only actual suggestions, not statements of sentiment or complaints, are included here.

1. More Senior Electives should be added, to give seniors added flexibility.

2. All Departments should switch Senior Courses to a range of electives.

3. Ten credits should be freed up, for allocation as the student sees fit, by eliminating unspecified departmental requirements.

4. Ten credits should be freed up, for allocation as the student sees fit, by eliminating one one-credit science requirement (which typically translates to a six-credit course) and one four-credit math requirement.

5. Courses relevant to more than one academic field should have their credits applicable to any of the several subject areas. Specifically mentioned were courses whose focus is outside the departmental liaison of the teacher and courses that address several subjects.

6. Each science course should retain the two-hour lab block, but should meet only four times each week. In other words, science courses that now have six blocks per week would have five blocks per week, of which two of the blocks would be consecutive.

7. The fourth year of math requirements should be removed, that is to say the total credit requirement for math should be reduced from sixteen to twelve.

8. Credit requirements should be lowered, while offering additional courses that combine what would previously have been two subjects; examples offered included combined algebra/geometry courses for math and biochemistry courses for science.