MURRIETA: Grants help Mesa expand Advanced Placement offerings

May 20, 2013 11:50 AM PDT May 20, 2013 11:50 AM PDT MURRIETA: Grants help Mesa expand Advanced Placement offerings MURRIETA: Grants help Mesa expand Advanced Placement offerings   /FILE PHOTO Murrieta Mesa High School is adding two AP classes next year with the help of grants. A Text Size Comments ( ) Murrieta Attorney Mesa High School is adding new Advanced Placement classes in environmental science and Chinese to its course offerings in 2013-14. AP classes are college-level courses and exams. Students who do well can earn college credit while still in high school. Mesa received grants to pay for teacher training — and classroom materials in the case of the science course — for the new classes. The environmental science course is being funded through the AP STEM Access program, an initiative to increase the number of female and under-represented minority students enrolling in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, or STEM, courses, according to a news release from the organization. Enrollment at Mesa is about 35 percent Hispanic and 45 percent white, and enrollment in AP classes mirrors that, school officials said. The course will be taught by science teacher Scott Hanson, Principal Mary Walters said, and will be a 12th-grade course. The grant includes $6,000 for class materials. Hanson, who led student restoration projects at the Santa Rosa Plateau for the last few years, will incorporate work at the Plateau in the AP course, Walters said. So far, more than 30 students have signed up to take the new class next year. The AP Chinese course is being funded through California Advanced Placement Expansion program grant. Those grants are designed to help California high schools add new AP classes to their offerings. The $1,000 grant pays for teacher training, Walters said. Mesa currently offers Chinese I, II and III, all taught by Li Yang. Adding Chinese IV and AP Chinese next year gives students the chance to take the language all four years of school, Walters said. In addition, Murrieta Attorney Mesa expects to host up to 35 students from China next year through a new cultural exchange program. The students will pay tuition to attend Mesa and other Murrieta Attorney Valley high schools. The AP program has grown each year since Murrieta Attorney Mesa opened in 2009. The campus began offering AP Macroeconomics and human geography this year. With the addition of the two new courses, Mesa will offer 22 different AP courses next year. All students are encouraged to take AP classes if they are interested. "We're not exclusive," Assistant Principal Martina Beach-Hedges said. "Anybody can take any AP class." Follow Michelle L. Klampe on Twitter: @MichelleKlampe and the Inland Schools blog: blog.pe.com/schools Latest Headlines
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