Thursday, March 28, 2024
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Putnam Schools Approve IB Contracts For 22-23 School Year

Putnam County Schools will continue its International Baccalaureate program for at least another year.

This after the school board approved its annual contracts for Cookeville High School and Avery Trace Middle School. Director of Schools Corby King said that they had discussed last school possibly phasing out the program.

“We may take that up in September, October, but we’ll give plenty of notice for parents and students to weigh in if we decided to go down that route again,” King said. “But right now, the IB program is in place so we have to pay those fees and it’ll be there for the 2022-2023 school year.”

King said that should they decide to explore phasing it out, there would be public meetings and town halls. King said that they had originally explored the phase-out of the program because students were not completing the IB degree and because the courses can take away from student-teacher engagement.

“And if we have students who complete the IB program and get the diploma then we want to support them,” King said. “But we’ve had students who are taking it more a la carte, just a class here and a class there, which we feel like we might be able to do through AP. Because those IB courses do take from our student-teacher engagement, and size of classes, there’s a lot involved. But again, it’s just something we had considered, but for right now we’re not touching it.”

The cost of the IB program at Cookeville High School was approved for some $11,650. The cost of Avery Trace’s program was approved for some $10,050.

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