BY MIKAYLA STEARNS
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Roseville High School seniors currently enrolled in the Advanced Placement Government course will only be receiving a grade bump for the first quarter, with credits for a College Preparatory Government class in the second half of the course.
AP Microeconomics students will still receive a weighted grade for their first quarter under AP Microeconomics, and will be enrolled in the weighted AP Macroeconomics on record for the other quarter.
AP Microecon joined AP Gov on the course list this school year, but both classes were not approved for ten credits before RHS administration advertised AP Gov and AP Microecon as their own semester-long courses.
“We’re not teaching AP Macroecon, but we’re going to enroll students in it anyway,” AP Gov teacher Dana Dooley said. “And that also means that [AP Econ teacher Kevin] Fagan is going to incorporate more of a Macro focus, to kind of be like ‘Yeah, we’re doing Macro.’”
According to Dooley, AP Gov has no such loophole.
“There isn’t a government-y, five credit, AP level course that we aren’t already teaching at this school that we then could pair with Gov on record to make it look like students are taking a fourth ap course to get AP credit,” Dooley said.
RHS assistant principal Jason Wilson visited the Government and Microeconomic classes to explain the credit conflict to the students.
“We are only allowed to allocate five credits of a weighted bump, and the second quarter of instruction is only to be allocated a 4.0, or the regular grade point,” Wilson said.
According to Dooley, staff is looking to change the policy holding back these courses throughout the district for the coming year.
“The easier but still difficult route is the one that we are seeking to take: it is to get the district to recognize and approve AP Gov as a ten credit course instead of a five credit course,” Dooley said. “And then that should help the other courses in other districts because that opens up the possibility for them to extend their AP Gov content as well.”
In years past, seniors taking AP Government would, on record, be enrolled in AP Government for their first quarter and in CP Economics for the second quarter.
Dooley incorporated mostly AP Gov work and some economics into the 18 weeks of the semester, in the years before RHS got an AP Microeconomics class.
These changes to the course selection and opportunities for a grade bump will have to be adjusted on students previous transcripts.
AP Gov students Assata Baker and Nilab Habib began a petition in the second period Gov class to urge Roseville Joint Union High School District to help the classes be approved as ten credit courses.
“Let’s go the school board and start a petition, so maybe that can affect change, I don’t know for this year but maybe for next year,” Baker said. “Me and Nilab wrote what we wanted to change, our mission statement and from there we went on with getting signatures and hoping to go to a council meeting and a school board meeting and affect change in that area.”
Dooley advertised the petition to her other upset periods of AP Gov.
“I’m not going to be the one who leads and does anything with the petition,” Dooley said. “I’m going to say, ‘Hey you guys are in this class learning how to affect change, I’m excited to see how you’re going to affect change in this.’”
At these meetings, students expressed their concerns with updating their college applications, where Wilson also recommended that students send out individual letters with their applications.
“We were really upset, not just because of our impression that we would get twenty credits, because we thought we were going to get twenty credits for college apps, but for the late notice for when we were filling out college apps, we had to go back and do twenty percent of our app and we had to implicate to UCs and CSUs that it had changed,” Baker said. “And some people had already sent in their apps and then they had to call the school and tell them what happened.”
Senior Makenna Vulgas, who will be enrolled in Gov next term, felt that this situation needed to be addressed with students earlier.
“It’s just kind of upsetting that all of this is happening three or so weeks from when the actual term ends,” Vulgas said.
Vulgas also feels as though that students were misled by enrolling in the AP class.
“It’s not the students’, fault but I feel like we are being penalized for a mistake that our school made and they never should have implemented this program if they didn’t get the proper approval,” Vulgas said. “They should have known it would backfire.”
