Regarding Health/Lifetime Fitness for Summer 2006

Some students, most often those who participate in band, orchestra, or athletics, opt to take 1 or both of these through our Collins Hill Community School in the summer to open up their schedule to take other electives their Freshman year . Following are the most frequent scenarios:

Scenario 1
A student is in Band, Orchestra, or Chorus. They sign up for the 3 required Academic subjects of Math, Language Arts, and Biology. They must also sign up during the day for a unit of band or orchestra. They have now used 4 of 6 possible units. They wish to take Geography as an elective because it will help on the Georgia High School Graduation Test, and possibly the Gateway. They also wish to start their Foreign Language requirement their freshman year to either be able to get in 4 years of a foreign language, “clear space” in their schedule for future classes they wish to take, OR they wish to take another type of elective. If this is the case, they do not have “space” in the schedule to take Health/Lifetime Fitness in the 9th grade year with other students. Unless they want to risk waiting until their Senior year to take this freshman class, they opt to take the two courses through Community School.

Scenario 2
A student is an athlete who wishes to take a specialized PE course such as Weight Training, Body Sculpting, or Tumbling to enhance their extra-curricular experience. They sign up for the 3 required Academic subjects of Math, Language Arts, and Biology along with this “specialized PE course”. This leaves only 2 units open. They wish to take Geography as an elective because it will help on the Georgia High School Graduation Test, and possibly the Gateway. They also wish to start their Foreign Language requirement their freshman year to either be able to get in 4 years of a foreign language, “clear space” in their schedule for future classes they wish to take, OR they wish to take another type of elective. If this is the case, they do not have “space” in the schedule to take Health/Lifetime Fitness in the 9th grade year with other students. Unless they want to risk waiting until their Senior year to take this freshman class, they opt to take the two courses through Community School.

In either of the above two scenarios, doubling up on year long PE’s is not possible at any time during the student’s high school career due to personnel and space restrictions.

Some students sign up for either Health OR Lifetime Fitness and do not take both courses during the summer prior to their freshman year. If this is the case, there are 3 possibilities for how the student will get in required course work:

1) The student may take the 1 semester course they did not take in the summer and combine it with either Computer Applications I, Banking, or Beginning Chorus. (**These are the ONLY courses that can be combined with Health or Lifetime Fitness**).

2) The student needs to plan on possibly waiting until their Senior year to take the remaining required freshman course for graduation.

3) They can opt to take the balance course the next summer. The reason for this is that the Master Schedule is set in the spring after students have registered. The Health/Lifetime Fitness sequence is reserved for freshmen.

To further explain option #2 and #3, once classes are set, there are few spaces left. We reserve all remaining space for incoming 9th graders and seniors who have not yet fulfilled this requirement until all classes are full. Even seniors risk the possibility of this class filling up before they are able to get into the class. It is a rarity for 10th and 11th graders to be in these classes during the regular school year due to the classes being full. Therefore, the safest bet is to take care of this requirement prior to the year of desired graduation (preferably during the freshman year).

If you wish to sign up for Health and/or PE through the Collins Hill High Community School, the application and deposit of $50 must be complete and turned into the Community School office by March 1, 2006. Please complete the community school application.