Only a couple weeks after the news broke out that IB students would lose their elective through elimination of the A/B day rotation, the Lee County School District (LCSD) has just made it clear that students would have their electives next year. However, there is still a means of change that will be occurring in Cape High’s IB Program over the next couple of years.
For the past two years, IB students have been rotating their Theory of Knowledge (TOK) class with a chosen elective every other day, since the schedule was changed to a 7-period day. Just as students were returning to school after spring break, IB students were told this rotation wouldn’t happen next year.
“When we asked questions many were unanswered,” said IB junior Sarah Soloman, referring back to when students were made aware of this change in their English class. Many students and their families were shocked and in anger by their loss of electives, with no explanation from the district..
However, the LCSD have changed their mind, for the moment, in favor of current IB student’s favor. Principal Ryan Jackson revealed he was in contact with School Board Chair Sam Fischer throughout the process of the District allowing IB students to keep their electives. “So he [Fischer] had notified me about it as well and told him there they had a plan to work it out to make sure that you know, they make sure they got to keep that elective option,” said Jackson.
In order for this to work, changes will be made for incoming IB students. One of these will be the introduction of one year standard level (SL) courses. SL courses for most IB students include science, language, and math classes.
In future years, some of these SL courses will only be one year long instead of two. By rearranging the schedule and eliminating one IB class from each junior and senior year, this will give students space in their schedule for one elective everyday for both years.
“Eventually when the rotation goes away sometime they have enough of those SL options that were not in this predicament” said Jackson, regarding incoming IB students.
At Fort Myers High School, IB senior Pranathi Madishetty has already had experience with the one year SL courses. The courses include SL Global Politics, SL Psychology, SL Sports, Exercise and Health Science, SL Spanish.
“SL Global Politics is on the easier side because there isn’t too much content that’s covered while for SL Psychology there are a lot of psychology studies that students have to learn so it might be hard to remember the details of each one on the test day,” stated Madishetty.
The implementation of one year courses will be a gradual process, and will not affect any current IB students.
“I know the direction that we need to head and that is to offer more one year SLs,” said Uhler, “It just takes time. I can’t do that in one year. You know, I’ve got to have students prepared.”
While this will take some adjusting for many IB teachers, it shows how crucial the survival of electives were for the students.
IB Coordinator Katelyn Uhler was concerned about students involved in programs such as band, choir, newspaper, pharmacy tech, and other electives that wouldn’t be possible without choice of elective. Our biggest concern is pharmacy,” stated Uhler. “I think the pharmacy program is an amazing program, and I don’t want students to have to choose between doing pharmacy or any other elective and doing IB.”
Students from the IB classes of 2025 and 2026 had decided to take action for their passion for their electives. A change.org petition has been created entitled “Save IB Students’ Electives in Lee County.” This petition has gained over 530 signatures within one week of its creation, and has inspired several phone calls to the LCSD.
“Immediately people messaged their parents and were already setting up their complaints through calling and emailing,” said Soloman, regarding the day her class was first informed about their loss of an elective. This outcry from both students and parents was heard.
“I’m proud of them,” stated Jackson, regarding IB students, “I told them they fight for what’s right. That’s why we fight for the kids. That’s why I love my position, I love doing this. It’s about you guys.”
IB/AP Psychology teacher Ashley Koehler was concerned about the survival of the program if electives were completely taken away. “I think this means that it could hurt the IB program significantly. Because they really need to be able to take an elective,” stated Koehler. “If you are having IB students do all this work and not giving them the opportunity to take a different course or something fun outside of the IB curriculum, you’re gonna lose students.”
Solomon is not only an IB student but Editor in Chief of Yearbook. “Now that I know I will have an elective, I feel relieved and grateful. I want my senior year to be full of memories,” she stated, “and the yearbook is a special place for me to make those memories. We deserve to have electives and we deserve to make our senior year ours.
