FCPS School Board updates 2023-2024 course offerings
November 14, 2022
At the regular school board meeting on Nov. 4, the Fairfax County School Board met to discuss changes to the courses offered for middle and high school in the 2023-2024 school year. Even though Jefferson has an extensive course list filled with many STEM-specific courses, changes for the 2023-2024 school year may impact participation in classes such as band, orchestra, and theatre.
The Course Review Committee proposed the addition of three new courses to the current course catalog: Athletic & Sports Leadership 4, Film Study II, and Forensic Science.
Three years of Athletic & Sports Leadership is already offered as part of the current course catalog and the addition of a fourth year allows continuity for students interested in pursuing athletic leadership skills. Similarly, Film Study II extends the learning in Film Study I without the added assessments of an IB/AP course.
Additionally, Forensic Science allows students to combine various sciences learned throughout high school such as biological, chemical, and physical sciences, and relate them to criminal justice.
However, the biggest changes to the courses offered are the change in weighting for advanced levels of band, orchestra, and chorus, along with the third and fourth-year courses for Technical Theatre & Theatre Arts.
By adding a 0.5 weight to the GPA, those courses now receive an honors weighting which will encourage participation and continuation in these classes. Changes in weighting may lead to increased participation in the music and arts department at Jefferson, eliminating the decrease in weighted GPA by taking these courses currently.
![Student outreach representatives from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) visit Jefferson to talk about career paths involving STEM in the CIA and student opportunities. “[Another CIA representative] invited me to join her because this is a STEM school and both of my degrees are in computer science and systems engineering. If any questions about CIA fields [arise] that contain those sciences, I could answer them,” CIA officer Michelle said.](https://www.tjtoday.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/cia-600x380.png)
![I had three team members working on [the finance tracker]. It creates a pie chart to show you your expenses and where you should cut down on costs. We also had a [tool] to recommend stocks to invest in, and an AI chatbot to ask [additional questions] about finances, freshman Kamel Elshaer said.](https://www.tjtoday.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/430737706_1197841344513170_8186491334261173802_n-600x400.jpg)
![Running for over 34 years, the Coca-Cola Scholars Foundation has awarded a total of $73,800,000 in scholarships to students around the nation. “It was pretty cool [to receive the scholarship.],” senior Brian Zhou said. “Its a great honor to be one of the few from TJ.”](https://www.tjtoday.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Screenshot-2024-03-03-at-4.35.08-PM-600x337.png)
