During the junior counselor meetings, it was announced to students that the Chino Hills Valley Unified School District (CVUSD) will not be offering online summer school. The decision has impacted all students, but especially rising seniors who have yet to meet certain graduation credits before the admission season begins.
CVUSD has offered students who have impacted schedules, or those who want to accelerate in their academics, an online program for over 10 years. The online summer school is different from traditional summer school as students are able to navigate their coursework more independently; as a result, the online academy has become extremely popular and vital for students that aren’t able to fulfill mandatory classes during the school year and those who want to explore more electives.
“It’s summer school that makes your whole high school career path easier because it allows you to take general classes over the summer, so that during the school year, you can actually take things that you’re interested in,” Allison Wong (11) said.
The decision to cancel online classes was made at the December district counselor meeting.
“The district is no longer working with any specific programs, such as Chaffey Online, San Bernardino Online these past summers, or more recently University of Laverne online,” counselor Ms. Cristina Domicoli said. “At this time, they have expressed to us that there is not going to be a program that they’re working with or collaborating with to provide those online courses for students. No explanation specifically to us, but that’s just where things stand right now.”
Similar circumstances where there were difficulties registering for the online summer school occurred last year as well. During that time, rising seniors were just as equally anxious as this year’s.
“I was extremely worried because summer school being canceled would have proved detrimental to my academic plans,” Zhe Wang (12) said. “It would have meant trying to scramble to fit AP Government into my already packed schedule.”
In addition to allowing more students to take elective classes, or boosting their GPAs, online courses are also important to those involved heavily around campus, such as athletes.
“As an athlete, it really just makes me frustrated because if I can get my required classes out of the way during the summer, then I will have more time to go to practice, or participate in my extracurriculars,” Wong said. “I think it’s unfair that we have to make sacrifices to our academics like not being able to take as many APs because we are involved in other things.”
Despite the cancellations of online summer school, the school will still offer traditional summer school that requires students to come to campus for classes.
“It wouldn’t be a concern for students that need credits for graduation, because there will be courses that they are able to take in order to fulfill requirements,” Ms. Domicoli said. “The only option is the programs that we had created, but that’s really going to be shifting back to the traditional summer school. Right now, we’re going with what we have available.”
As next year’s class registration begins in February for juniors, the counselors will continue to monitor for updates with summer school.
“We will be talking with or will be communicating with this information to the students during registration. Part of that speech is usually some summer information, we’ll let you students know if they should go to summer school or if we recommend it or not during registration when you meet one-on-one with your counselor,” Ms. Domicoli said. “If anything changes from the district’s standpoint and we get new information, we will be communicating that to students.”
