Butler considers various curriculum alterations
BUTLER TWP — Butler Area School District’s board discussed a variety of curriculum changes at its committee of the whole meeting Monday, Jan. 13, including new partnerships with local universities and efforts to boost student performance.
The discussion comes as the board looks to prepare the high school’s course selection catalog for the 2025-26 school year. But suggestions are based on years of efforts.
“This has been multiple years of work that’s come to a culmination. We’ve been visiting other schools and places, looking at how expansive their college in high school programs are. We sent a delegation last year to an Ohio school to look at some things. This has been years of work,” superintendent Brian White said.
The school district is looking to continue improving overall data points as well. White said the most recent four-year cohort’s graduation rate was 83.5%.
“Our student performance, prior to the pandemic, was very strong. It was very strong. It has not recovered since the pandemic,” White said.
Some of the larger changes included a new framework of introductory classes for freshman students, changing the daily schedule format at the high school and new college-credit classes. This includes changing the schedule format from a seven-period per week format with extra days to an alternative A-day and B-day schedule.
“I think at the high school one of our focuses is changing our culture. Changing the culture of our academics, changing the culture of our behavior,” Jason Huffman, principal of Butler Area Senior High School, said while presenting curriculum changes.
All freshman students at Butler Area High School will be required to take a new freshman seminar course based around a variety of topics. Huffman said it is inspired by West Virginia University’s Purpose Center, a center where students engage with resources to create personalized academic success. Students will also have the choice to enroll in the “Ninth Grade Academy,” a model for students struggling with introductory level courses.
“I think ninth grade has to be treated differently than what would we would normally look at for a traditional high school setting, because they have electives and they’re running around the building, doing their thing and intermixing with 12th graders and 11th graders, but I think when we start getting into the educational component, there’s things we can do to better prepare them,” Huffman said.
New computer science courses, along with college-credit courses through partnerships with Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Pittsburgh and Butler County Community College, also were discussed.
“We have kids that really have opportunities to be successful,” White
The board said during presentations at the committee of the whole meeting that general trends in education are to assess students through various means such as projects, presentations and portfolios. However, it said that semester exams will continue to be administered in courses as well as “Keystone exam trigger courses,” so that students are not failing to meet expectations set by state and federal requirements.
