The course selection process for 2023-2024 draws to a close this week with last Concord Regional Technical Center applications due Friday, Feb. 24.

School counselors have been working all month to provide academic advising and to help students submit course requests for their sophomore, junior and senior years.

Concord High School students have a lot of courses available to them. In addition to traditional CHS and CRTC offerings, various departments added several new courses that begin in the fall.

For example, the art department added a year-long AP Art and Design class worth 1 credit toward graduation. AP Art & Design is offered to 11th and 12th graders.

The music department now offers a semester-long, 0.5 credit elective Piano class. Not only is this class open to all students, regardless of grade level, but learners can enroll multiple times.

English 11 has been discontinued as a year-long course, but elements of the class will be taught in a one-semester, 0.5 credit elective called the Art of Influence.

Students still need to earn 4.0 full credits of English to graduate, but beginning next year, only English 9 and English 10 will be required year-long courses in that subject area.

English of Survival is also offered next year as a half-year, 0.5 credit elective, but it must be taken simultaneously with Science of Survival. 

G Parsons, who’ll be a senior next year, said, “I’m excited to be taking AP Bio and Latin V and Chamber Singers.”

“I’m looking forward to Public Speaking and AP Art,” said Landon McCormick, who’ll be a junior.

New courses proposals often stem from student requests or from teacher suggestions based on what they see students enjoying, wanting or needing. 

Once a teacher creates a proposal, departmental colleagues discuss and sometimes refine the idea. Proposals approved at the school level must be approved the Concord School District Instructional Committee and then by the school board itself.

Once student requests are processed, administrators determine how many sections of different courses will run next year. Then teachers are assigned to various classes.

All students should take special care in selecting classes for the following year. Not only do they need to be sure that they are satisfying requirements for graduation, but there are no guarantees that they can switch from one elective to another when fall comes.