Due to a tight budget, the school staff and district have chosen to cut the Engineering class. This is affecting next year’s class schedules and it may cause anger and distress in students.
The Engineering class is an important class because it is a CTE which is a class to an introduction to a possible career. Not only is Engineering interesting and challenging, but it also pays very well.
Brian Connolly is the engineering and graphic designer teacher. Connolly has been teaching here for four years and has seen a downward trend since then.
“This has been kind of a long trend, I taught four engineering classes and one graphic design class.” Connolly said. “Both of my advanced engineering classes have already been cut 2 to 3 years ago and now they are cutting my Engineering class.”
Connolly explains why he started the Engineering class that is now being cut. After he had his engineering classes were cut.
“I understand that a lot of kids don’t have time to be in the Engineering club but I made the class so that they could learn things that they want,” Connolly said. “I wanted students to have a Engineering experience. My hope was that students could join Engineering even if they didn’t have a lot of time.
Connolly explains that some people want to try out Engineering even though they might not want to pursue it as a career.
“Some students just want to try it out and due to the cut, they won’t have as many chances to try it,” Connolly said.
He explains how scheduling affects how students can take Engineering.
“Since some students have fixed periods for some classes like arts and languages, there aren’t as many who can have an experience in Engineering,” Connolly said.
Connolly shares that the class needs a lot of time to help students through and that the classes were too big with limited periods.
“It’s a project based class and it’s hard to have a big class when all the students are working with difficult things,” Connolly said. “There isn’t enough time in the period to help them all.”
He also explains how the people in Engineering are unlike most of the other classes and that there can be friendships built that wouldn’t have been built.
“I had a student who was almost valedictorian and others who probably won’t go to college,” Connolly said. “I think this is great because it creates communities that wouldn’t have been created. Not many classes can have such a diverse community.”
Overall, the cutting of Engineering is affecting not only students in Engineering but maybe potential friendships as well.
