Since 2013, Mountain View Preparatory has participated in the International Baccalaureate Primary Years Programme, an advanced learning program that, per the International Baccalaureate Organization’s mission statement, “aims to develop inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people who help to create a better and more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect.” The program allows students to have a more direct connection with teachers and is aimed at making students interested in learning for its own sake.
Under the current system, MVP students from kindergarten to fifth grade participate in the Primary Years Programme, which ends at sixth grade. Students in fifth grade complete an exhibition displaying what they have accomplished in the previous six years. In a unanimous decision of the Cottonwood-Oak Creek School District governing board at a meeting on Tuesday, April 2, the IB program at the school will be extended to sixth grade, with the exhibition taking place at the end of that year.
By switching to IB teaching for another year, sixth grade students will be paired with teachers for self-contained classes that teach a variety of subjects, rather than switching from class to class for different subjects like in the other middle school grades.
The proposal was presented before the board not just by MVP teachers and administrators, but by two students who had gone through the program, Avery Tresize and Kinsey Fangman. The youngsters prepared a PowerPoint presentation on various projects that MVP students and classes engaged in as part of the program. They highlighted the value of the one-on-one relationship with teachers that IB aims to create, that could be continued for another year.
“I think it would be better if sixth grade were moved down to PYP because for two years I had Mrs. Adams and I developed a huge relationship with her,” said one of the two presenting students. “I know a lot of things about her and she knows a lot about me, stuff that teachers this year don’t know because I only have an hour with them before I switch classrooms.”
According to the documentation provided to the board by MVP, the cost of the change would be minimal for the school district, as it would involve mostly changing around the responsibilities of existing teaching staff, rather than needing to add new personnel. The two projected sixth grade teachers have already completed IB training. The main cost would be moving one teacher from 0.5 Full Time Equivalent to 0.6 Full Time Equivalent in order to add sixth grade Spanish to the program, at estimated cost of $3,500.
The idea of expanding the program came about due to plans by MVP to lower its enrollment in coming years, meaning that next year’s seventh and eighth grade classes are larger than the other seven classes and are the only two classes that would require more than two teachers to cover. MVP administrators viewed the shift of next year’s sixth grade class to only requiring two teachers as an opportunity to make the change now.
The shift was met with no significant opposition from COCSD board members or administrators.
“I’m very supportive of this structure,” COCSD Superintendent Steve King said at the meeting after the presentation. “I think they’ve done their homework.”
