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New Riverhead High School courses proposed for 2016-17

Riverhead High School may offer several new classes starting in the 2016-17 year, including robotics, digital filmmaking and additional AP courses.

During the school board’s meeting Tuesday night, high school principal Charles Regan gave a presentation about the courses he’s proposing for next year’s budget and described them as a representation of “increased rigor and growth” in the school’s science, technology, engineering and math programs, known as STEM, as well as art, world languages, and food and consumer science.

“We’re pleased to announce we have a lot of student enthusiasm and teacher interest in offering a bunch of new courses for the next school year,” Mr. Regan said.

This is the second year the high school has offered a robotics club and Mr. Regan said he’d like to offer Robotics 1 due to its popularity with students. In addition, he’s proposing to add a Principal of Engineering class.

“We’re looking at real world and real life cases of engineering, both failures and success,” he said about the course.

As for food and consumer science, Mr. Regan said there’s been a big demand for a baking and pastry class and the school is looking to also add a half-credit “College Readiness” course.

“Especially those that are first-generation college students, they might not have that background knowledge from their household about how to deal with scheduling and how to seek help,” he said.

Mr. Regan is also proposing a new art class in digital filmmaking where students use Mac computers to edit videos with Final Cut software.

An environmental science course is also proposed for next year. If it becomes popular, Mr. Regan explained, then he’ll look into adding AP Environmental Science in the future.

The high school principal also said looking to add an AP Computer Science course, which he said the student computer coding club has requested. He’s asking to add AP French next year, too.

The school’s administration and Board of Education are expected to begin public discussions about the 2016-17 budget this winter.

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