Vicksburg High School will offer a few new courses next academic year in addition to some minor tweaks to its art courses.
During the Feb. 9 Board of Education meeting, district officials fielded presentations related to the new classes. In the end, all additions and changes were approved.
Matt Bombich was first to address the board. He pitched the expansion of applied engineering and robotics.
“We’re going to add one section of that course and then we’re going to add three sections of the design-and-build lab,” Bombich said. “We’re going to still teach CAD principles, digital modeling, fabrication inside the shop, advanced tools … we’ve got a handful of projects that we’ll be developing this summer that I hope to introduce to the class next year.”
He said with advanced computer numerical control machines – a CNC router and a plasma cutter, for example – students will be able to make items such as fidget spinners, LED-decorated wall art and custom Christmas ornaments. A laser engraver will allow students to personalize Christmas ornaments.
“Eventually, we’ll get into a little bit of coding and automation. Right now, I have it proposed as an automatic plant-watering system, so we’ll see how that goes,” Bombich said. “Through the entire course of the year, students will be maintaining a portfolio of their work and then at the end of the year they’ll have a portfolio that they can present.”
Next, high school teacher Karen Rikkers discussed the merits of a hospitality and tourism course.
Rikkers said hospitality and tourism is a fast-growing industry. She pitched the project-based class as a CTE course.
“Some of the things we’re looking at are management, customer service, a culinary side, business-to-business, design – graphic or interior – travel and tourism, and event planning are some of the things we’ll focus on for this class,” Rikker said. “This will look at applying real-world scenarios, so they will get hands-on learning.”
Rikkers said she hopes to eventually partner with The Mill for students to receive work-based learning.
“This will be a great opportunity for our students to become more confident and explore career pathways … these are jobs they could either walk (into) right out of high school with a certification, or training them and preparing them for college so they could go into higher management positions.”
The course will include financial literacy, providing life skills related to pricing, marketing and budgeting, Rikkers said.
High school art teacher Anna Lacey also appeared before the board. She suggested combining a pair of 2-D art design classes into one.
“Currently, we offer a full semester of drawing and a full semester of painting, and I find that students get a little sick of doing the same thing again and again, like painting after painting after painting,” Lacey said. “So, I did some surveys with my current students to get a feel for what they would be more interested in.”
The result, she said, will provide more variety, and fresh and new opportunities for her students, Lacey noted.
“Even though the class will still essentially cover both bases, it will just do it in one class instead of two separate,” she added. “Especially if I have kids who only get to take one art class in high school, this gives just a little bit more of a broad experience.”
In a separate art-related matter, Lacey asked to add fiber arts into her print-making class, creating a dual art medium class.
Principal Adam Brush explained the need to add half a credit to an economics course. He said the change is necessary because the state requires a six-standard personal finance component for students beginning with the class of 2028.
“We thought it was best to embed (the personal-finance class) into econ class,” Brush said. “What we have to do to make this work is we have to change the name of our economics class and we have to change the number of credits.” He said the course will appear on a student’s transcript as “Econ & Personal Econ.”
In other action, the board OK’d a request for an eighth-grade trip to Cedar Point on June 8.
