OXFORD – Students enrolled in horticulture at Oxford High School may soon be able to receive a career and technical endorsement on their diploma for their participation in the year-long class.
At a special meeting held last night, High School Principal Christine Pierce and Agriculture Teacher Dale Johnson presented their plan for gaining the necessary approval for the program to members of the district’s board of education.
Currently, Johnson explained, Oxford students are only able to earn CTE credit through DCMO BOCES, which offers a number of fields of study including cosmetology, auto-mechanics and conservation.
“We’re not competing with BOCES,” the agriculture educator said, stressing that horticulture, the growing of plants, is not one of the courses of study currently offered at the North Norwich campus. “It’s not conservation; it’s horticulture.”
According to Pierce, offering the horticulture class with the state’s CTE stamp of approval can be done at no additional cost to the district. “It will allow us to utilize the resources that we (already) have to support this program,” the building administrator explained, including staff and facilities.
“All of these pieces are in place, it’s just getting them aligned,” added Superintendent Randy Squier.
Offering the CTE credit at the “home school” rather than sending students to BOCES will have the added benefit of keeping more of Oxford’s students on campus. This will allow students to spend more time in the classroom while giving the district greater control over their curriculum, Pierce said.
To further enhance the horticulture program, Johnson said, they will also pursue articulation agreements with area colleges that offer horticulture-related degree fields, such as Morrisville State College, SUNY Delhi and SUNY Cobleskill.
Johnson and Pierce have been working in conjunction with Jeff Weinell, a business teacher at the high school, and other educators to map out the portions of the horticulture curriculum which satisfy the state’s science and math requirements. They will be doing the same with the English components of the course as well.
They have used curriculums of other districts, such as Vernon-Verona-Sherrill and Walton, as a guide through the process.
In order to continue moving forward, the team will need to form a review committee, for which they needed the board’s approval. Once formed, the committee will consist of high school educators, members of the local business community engaged in horticulture, at least one school board member and the superintendent.
After that, Pierce said, “There is another committee step before we submit the curriculum for (New York State Education Department) approval.” If that approval is received this year, the roughly 15 juniors and seniors enrolled in the course during the 2009-2010 academic year will be eligible for the CTE endorsement when they graduate, she reported.
According to Johnson, the school is also considering a plan to pursue CTE credit for two other programs, one in Ag Mechanics and the other Basic Agriculture.