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School officials give more details on IB academy
By Conner Hammett, chammett@starlocalnews.com
Officials from Plano East Senior High gave a packed theater audience an update regarding the school's upcoming International Baccalaureate academy on Tuesday.
The evening started with a history and explanation of the IB program. First brought to Plano East in 1995, it is similar to Advanced Placement, allowing students to earn college credits and experience a higher level of rigor than typical high school courses, said Plano East Principal Karen McDonald.
With their coursework, IB students earn both a normal high school diploma and an IB diploma, said Kathy Witcher, IB program coordinator. To earn an IB diploma, students must take six courses during their junior and senior years in six different subject areas: language and literature, language acquisition, individuals and societies, experimental sciences, math and the arts.
"This program prepares students to be international citizens sensitive to other cultures, fluent in world languages and able to be self-directed learners and independent thinkers," she said.
The IB academy, which will be located on the Plano East campus, will allow 11th-graders from all Plano ISD schools to begin the IB program full-time beginning August 2013.
Currently, freshmen and sophomores at Clark and Williams high schools have access to International Honors, a preparation program of sorts for IB. But the opening of the academy will centralize the program at Plano East and expand it to every 9th and 10th grader in the district, McDonald said.
Keeping with the school board's vision of the academy as a "school within a school," Plano East plans to create a "special place" in which IH students can study, McDonald said.
"Architects are looking at that right now, and it truly will be a wonderful school within a school," she said. "Our ninth and 10th graders will have their own collaboration area [and] a place they'll come in the morning when they get off the bus."
All IH classes, which will be led by IB-trained teachers, will take place in this designated area, with certain classes taking place in existing Plano East classrooms. IH students will also have the option to be involved in UIL programs such as band, orchestra and athletics, and some clubs will be open to the students, McDonald said.
"We're really looking at everything that will make this a full experience for our ninth and 10th graders," she said.
The details of how IB students from outside of the feeder area will get to and from Plano East are still being worked out, McDonald said.
"Transportation will be provided, and the district is working on that," she said. "The last word we had is students can go to the nearest high school. Parents can take the students there and then transportation would be provided here and back."
As with all of the district's upcoming academies, parents must fill out applications on the district's website by Jan. 11, 2013, Witcher said. Acceptance letters, along with transfer forms for parents of students outside the Plano East feeder area, will be sent out on Jan. 18. Academy conferences are scheduled to start sometime after Feb. 1.
Unlike the Plano ISD Academy High School, no limits will be set on the number of students from a certain feeder area, Witcher said.
"We have plenty of room," she said.
After the meeting, Saurabh Dixit said he was pleased with the informativeness of the presentation, though he is still not sure if he will apply his daughter, Mita, an eighth-grader at Robinson Middle School, to the program. He said he still has questions about class-ranking and transportation, especially since he lives in on the far west side of the city and expects his daughter to participate in after-school activities next year.
"For me, unfortunately, that is the one thing that is going to play the biggest factor in our decision," he said.
Suneeta Donepudi said she and her husband are still trying to decide whether to sign their eighth-grade son up for one of the academies or continue with regular high school, especially since their son has an interest in basketball and would be competing against 11th and 12th graders playing for Plano East's team next year.
"It's a beginning," she said of the meeting. "We had some idea from talking to other people or looking at their course catalogs ... but they did clarify a lot of doubts."
For information about the IB academy, visit www.ib.pisd.edu/admission.
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