Upper Darby proposes NEON pilot and structured pathways with Delaware County Community College
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Summary
District staff recommended piloting a NEON financial-literacy college course and three structured pathways with Delaware County Community College (pre-nursing, business academy, business foundation); officials estimated initial NEON tuition at $300 per student and structured-pathway per-student costs of about $1,440, with a first-year upper bound of roughly $86,000 for 60 students.
Upper Darby administrators presented two models to expand college-credit opportunities for high-school students: an embedded-university NEON pilot and structured two-year and one-year pathways with Delaware County Community College.
James Finch, supervisor of guidance and mathematics, said the NEON model would embed a university-affiliated, credit-bearing course inside the high-school day. "Our plan is to try transition the current personal finance investing honors course into a college level credit bearing financial literacy course from either the Wharton School of Business or Arizona State University," Finch said, adding that NEON's tuition would be $300 per student; a projected two-section pilot of about 50 students would cost roughly $15,000.
Finch described three structured-pathway options with Delaware County Community College: a two-year pre-nursing sequence (23 credits), a two-year business academy (24 credits), and a one-year business foundations pathway (12 credits). The district's interest survey of 10th- and 11th-graders returned 408 responses indicating interest (224 pre-nursing, 104 business academy, 83 business foundations), which Finch said represents roughly 20% of the grade cohort but noted interest does not equal enrollment.
Financial planning estimates an annual per-student cost for structured-pathway tuition, fees and textbooks of about $1,440; at a planning cap of up to 60 students in year one the district projected a maximum first-year investment of roughly $86,000, while stressing that costs would scale with actual enrollment and that final cohorts depend on Delaware County admissions, placement criteria and scheduling.
Board members asked about capacity, caps and whether NEON or structured courses would count toward Pennsylvania personal-finance graduation requirements; administrators said Delaware County and NEON set enrollment caps (the presentation used 20-student pathway caps as planning figures), NEON includes an "upper priority" classroom teacher plus tuition, and that a college-level financial-literacy course would satisfy the state personal-finance requirement for graduation.
Committee members consented to advance the structured-pathway and NEON proposals to the March voting meeting for formal consideration.