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Wallingford committee approves revised and new high-school, CTE and elementary science courses by consensus
Summary
The Board of Educational Instructional Committee on May 5 gave verbal consensus to a package of new and revised courses across CTE, family and consumer sciences, world language, music and K–12 science, moving the district’s course offerings for next year forward.
The Board of Educational Instructional Committee on May 5 gave verbal consensus to a large package of curriculum proposals that district staff presented, approving a range of new and revised courses across Career and Technical Education (CTE), family and consumer sciences, fine arts, world language, and K–12 science.
District curriculum staff presented the course slate and enrollment projections before the board took consensus votes. The slate included middle- and high-school CTE courses (grade 7 structural design; life-on-your-own; digital imaging and web design; medical careers I; developing child I; woodworking I), new and revised world-language and music offerings (French IV, Italian II, music theory, band), and elementary through high-school science updates (grade 2–3 science, grade 7, anatomy & physiology, environmental earth science, astronomy).
Why it matters: the approvals set which courses will be offered and how those programs will be scheduled next school year. Several presenters said the revisions aim to align classroom activities to career pathways, incorporate modern tools (for example, CNC routers, laser engravers, and Photoshop/Illustrator instruction), and emphasize proficiency and phenomena-based learning in science tied to NGSS standards.
K–12 CTE coordinator Dave Ullman walked the board through the CTE proposals, describing unit-level work, hands-on projects and enrollment figures. "We start by learning about basic structures ... then students go through and create a series of different bridges," Ullman said of the grade-7 structural-design encore course. For the new digital imaging and web-design elective, district staff described HTML/CSS, graphic-design fundamentals, and a makerspace element that lets students bring projects to life on vinyl cutters and laser engravers. Mr. Grama summarized the family-and-consumer-science elective Life On Your Own as a course aimed at late-high-school students preparing for independent life, saying the curriculum covers "career and employment…soft skills…self care and emotional health" and practical household skills.
Fine-arts and world-language coordinator Todd Snyder described a shift in upper-level language courses from grammar-driven to proficiency-based instruction and added cultural-comparison projects in French and Italian. The district said small enrollments in upper-level language classes are treated as a guideline: "Our guideline is 15, not a hard and fast rule," a district presenter told the board, adding courses necessary for progression (for example, keeping French IV available so students can continue to French V/VI) may be run with fewer students.
K–12 science coordinator Dan Wasprack previewed revised elementary and secondary science sequences built around phenomena-based, durational learning. Grade-2 units launch from simple phenomena such as a cold glass causing condensation; grade-3 work includes weather and climate comparisons between Wallingford/Connecticut and global locations. Middle- and high-school science revisions range from chemistry/energy in grade 7 to anatomy & physiology and a proposed Environmental Earth Science elective that ties geology, resource extraction, energy systems and ocean/atmosphere interactions to human impacts.
Board members posed logistics questions — for example, whether students in digital-imaging would be able to access Photoshop off campus, and how the planetarium is used to support astronomy — and staff responded that Photoshop licenses are costly and that free alternatives are available for home use, and that the planetarium will be used as a curricular enhancement (Lyman Hall students visit once per semester; Sheehan use varies by teacher).
Board actions and next steps: the board moved to accept curriculum proposals section-by-section by verbal consensus during the meeting. District staff will proceed with scheduling and implementation planning; several presenters noted that some enrollments and sections are still being finalized.
Ending note: presenters emphasized project-based learning, career linkages in CTE, and NGSS-aligned, phenomenon-led instruction in science as the through-line for the revisions the board approved by consensus.
