<p>Yes, it counts as PE credit, at least at our school. Sports have seasons. You couldn’t play a sport that had the same season because you wouldn’t be able to be at two games at the same time. But you could play three sports if they had different seasons and didn’t conflict or didn’t conflict too much. At our school, you take PE period 6 if you are in a sport which leads into after-school practice or games. Occasionally, the school allows a kid to not fill the spot with PE, but that mostly depends on the coach and the kid and the teacher whose class the kid would be missing every time there was a game.</p>
<p>Some extracurricular activities happen in elective courses. For example, a school could not have an orchestra if there was no class devoted to it because you need practice and have instruction time. Also, you can’t get everyone there after school all the time. Same with vocal groups, art classes, etc. Elective courses are often also a kid’s extra-curricular, whether it’s playing the violin or writing for the school paper in journalism. There are a number of reasons some of these activities need to be classes. Journalism requires the use of expensive design programs, computers, and a teacher who is making sure (hopefully) the kids are improving their writing and learning the role of a press in society. There is no money to pay a teacher to do it after school. At my son’s CA school, almost half the school consists of magnet students who are bussed in from far away. There is absolutely no funding for bussing for zero period classes. There is now no funding for after-school classes. We actually did lose state funding for all home-to-school bussing in January, but our superintendent took the money from something else to make sure students get to school and home. Anyhow, because of equity issues classes need to be when kids can access them. I’m not sure why it surprises you that schools offer elective courses in the arts, etc. and encourage/require kids to take them. These are part of a well-rounded education which is exactly why the UCs added the art requirement. It will be a sad day for public education when those classes are eliminated.</p>
<p>Also students who take semesters or quarters off to do co-op jobs will graduate late in calendar terms (unless they would have otherwise graduated early), even though they may have spent only 8 semesters or 12 quarters in school.</p>
<p>Senior class preregistrations have to be turned in tomorrow. Thanks to you all for the reality check and the suggestions. She’s going to drop French 4 and replace it with AP Art History so the requirements are covered. If something works out over the summer we can always ask for a schedule change in the fall, but given the way the state budget is going out here it seems too uncertain to count on any kind of summer school coming through. So for Sr. year she will have </p>
<p>AP Govt/Econ
AP Lit
AP Physics B
AP Art History
PE (yoga!)
Journalism 4</p>
<p>Thanks again. I love all the different opinions and ideas parents are so willing to offer here!</p>
Oh the elective courses in the arts I understand perfectly. We have them too. We even have two orchestras and the ones in the more elite orchestra have not one but two orchestra classes a day. We also have an 8+1 period day so that you can take a full load of academic courses and have room for the electives. But our school newspaper, yearbook and literary magazines and student government don’t have classes associated with them. We do have busing and a fairly compact school district. Even if you got rid of busing no one would have to walk more than three miles to get to school.</p>
<p>Denise, she has AP Calc BC this year and that’s the highest math the school offers. It hasn’t been a problem for college admissions with kids who do Calc BC their Jr. year not having a math class sr. year at our HS.</p>
<p>Interesting, mathmom. Our kids come from very far away. Some easily spend more than two hours a day in transportation. I wish we all were within three miles. I don’t think we could pull off journalism and student government if they weren’t classes.</p>
<p>By the way, no one pushes kids into those EC-type classes. Those kids are there because they want to be and they do have schedule issues. There is a huge downside of having those activities as classes. It means that top students have to choose between something academic and something like being editor-in chief of the newspaper (in my son’s case) and that they have to lower their GPA and ranking to pursue leadership in those ECs. So usually the kids who are ranked first and second are the ones with fewer ECs.</p>
<p>Which is exactly backwards of what colleges want to see. The only EC that we have as a ‘class’ is marching band. It is just their fall band class vs taking a concert band in the fall if you are not in marching band. They do get to practice during the school day but they have practices in the evening as well.</p>
<p>Oh yes, mimk6, the gpa takes a hit at our school if you take any activity classes, take more than the required 2 yrs of PE due to being on a sports team, or take foreign languages (only AP gets a weighted grade at our school for foreign language). I had a talk with my kids early on about how aiming for the highest gpa in their class was pointless, it would go to someone who was not involved in any major HS activities and planned their whole 4 year schedule to maximize their gpa and the end of first semester sr. year, but that I wanted them to have a more balanced HS experience.</p>
<p>The high school’s calculation of GPA is not important for UC and CSU, since they recalculate GPA (based only on a-g required courses, with limits on the number of honors points) and do not use current class rank as calculated by the high school (UC ELC uses the previous classes’ top 9% UC-recalculated GPA to set the ELC threshold).</p>
<p>Of course, if she is applying to colleges which use the high school’s calculation of class rank in admissions, then the “gaming” of the GPA by avoiding non-academic electives or taking academic electives which do not have honors versions can make a difference.</p>
<p>Students in college will likely see a lot more GPA “gaming”, at least if they know any pre-med or pre-law students trying to find the “easy A” courses at their colleges.</p>
<p>Which is why high school ‘rankings’ are rather silly and left over from the dark ages, IMO. Taking a fourth year of Orchestra to be First Chair senior year should not hurt your rank/gpa, but it does in schools that give bonus points/higher ranking to AP/IB coursework.</p>