Pine-Richland board reviews proposed 2025–26 English curriculum; asks staff to study restoring To Kill a Mockingbird in Academic English 9

Pine-Richland School District administrators presented the proposed 2025–26 English curriculum for grades 9–12 at the district's Academic Achievement Governance meeting on July 21, 2025. The discussion focused on Academic English 9, where teachers recommended "A Separate Piece" as the primary novel and listed To Kill a Mockingbird as a secondary resource; several board members asked staff to investigate whether To Kill a Mockingbird should be restored as a guaranteed (primary) text for Academic English 9.

The curriculum presentation, led by Dr. Pasquinelli (district administrator), walked board members through the program-of-studies documents, course-enrollment history, and a new core-text/anthology overview that lists primary and secondary resources for each unit across grades 9'12. Dr. Pasquinelli said, "the curriculum in terms of the standards, the eligible content, the learning goals, they do not change and have not changed," and described the board-approved materials as the "guaranteed experience" students should receive in a given course.

Board members and administrators discussed several points of evidence the staff provided: course-request counts (for 2019'20, English 9 had 161 requests and Honors English 9 had 180 requests), enrollment trends showing growing Advanced Placement (AP) participation in grades 11 and 12, and AP performance data. The administration reported an average AP score of 3.91 for the…