By Calvin Pynn, contributor
The Harrisonburg City School Board started its first meeting of 2025 by elevating Emma Phillips from vice chair to serve as the board’s chair this year, while new board member Tim Howley was unanimously elected vice chair.
Phillips, who was elected to the board in 2022, teaches biology at Blue Ridge Community College, while Howley teaches in JMU’s College of Health and Behavioral Studies.
Both Howley and Phillips have children in the city school division.
Howley and Matt Snyder are the two newest members of the six-person board, having been elected in November. Tuesday night marked their first meeting.
Changes to district’s class offerings
After reviewing classes for the 2025-2026 academic year, about two-dozen courses will be cut from the curriculum, while four new courses will be added, including a pair of marketing classes.
The courses slated to be removed are because of low enrollment — indicating a lack of student interest — and/or a lack of faculty available to teach the classes. Many of those courses had also not been offered in several years despite still being included in the Program of Studies, said Joy Blosser, the district’s chief academic officer.
“This year, we really wanted to focus on cleaning up the Program of Studies,” Blosser told the Board. “Having two high schools now, we felt like it was even more imperative to make sure that the courses we were floating were courses we could support with staff, and that students were interested in and could probably run.”
Some of the courses being removed include Advanced Placement (AP), as well as dual enrollment classes, in which students earn both high school and college credit.The entire list of courses being removed from the program are as follows
Middle School:
-Intro to French
-French
High School (General Education):
-Functional Art
-Improvisation for Theater
– Musical Theater
– Music Theory
-AP Music Theory
-Advanced Mathematics
-Probability and Statistics
-Applied Biology
-Scientific Research Lab Honors
-Biology 102 (dual enrollment)
– AP Macroeconomics
-AVID Seminar
– Italian 1, 2 and 3
– Introduction to Speech and Communication (dual enrollment)
High School – Career and Technical Education (CTE):
-Mentorship
-Advanced Accounting
– Small Business and Entrepreneurship
– Technology of Robotic Science
– Exploring Computer Science
– Cybersecurity Fundamentals
– Sports Medicine 1 and 2
Some of the career and technical education courses to be cut are also offered at Massanutten Technical Center, Blosser said. She said while some advanced math and science courses will be removed, there will still be higher-level AP courses and alternative capstone options available in those subjects.
The courses that will be added to HCPS’s Program of Studies are:
High School – General Education:
-British Literature (dual enrollment)
-Music in Society (dual enrollment)
High School – CTE:
-Principals of Business and Marketing
– Sports Marketing
Update on collective bargaining
Superintendent Michael Richards told the board that efforts are still moving forward with collective bargaining, which the board approved last year, even though the panel formed to navigate those discussions has delayed the election of a representative.
“They found a bit of a roadblock that’s built into the resolution that we put forward, and they’re going to recommend a way of amending that,” Richards said. “I’m looking over that with them now, and I’ll bring that to board leadership very soon.”
Collective bargaining allows teachers and staff to elect a representative to negotiate with the district for benefits, compensation and working conditions.
The School Board will convene next for a work session at Thomas Harrison Middle School next Tuesday, Jan. 21.
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