High school science order changes and course labels are renamed

What happened

The curriculum committee told the board on November 17, 2025 that high school science would move to biology in grade 9, chemistry in grade 10, physics or environmental science in grade 11 and additional Advanced Placement courses in grade 12, and that the middle schools would phase in a new inquiry-based programme, OpenSciEd, over three years. Visual and performing arts was reorganised to add honours options. Separately the district relabelled its general-education course level as college prep and college prep as college prep enhanced or enriched.

Why it matters to families

The order in which science is taught decides which courses a student can reach by senior year, and the district had already seen geometry passing rise 26 percent after it restored the traditional maths sequence. The renaming worried special-education families, who told the board in December that they plan course selections years ahead and needed to know whether the change altered content, rigour, prerequisites or graduation requirements, or was only a relabelling.

The evidence

The November 17, 2025 approved minutes record the curriculum committee report with the new grade-by-grade science sequence and the three-year OpenSciEd phase-in. The December 8, 2025 minutes record the course-renaming questions and the curriculum director's response, along with the new courses added for 2026-27. The May 18, 2026 five-year science programme review sets out the review and implementation timeline.

The source