Is anyone else experiencing a hard push for CTE classes at MS/JH? Is it affecting the amount of kids in your band? We had like 40-ish 7th graders this year and about half have elected to quit band to do AG and career explorations. How do we address this, or do we just sit and hope we weather it gracefully? Any ideas would be great.
Re: CTE
Posted by Weighted Funding on 4/12/2026, 6:05 pm, in reply to "CTE"
The weighted funding is too attractive for administrators, particularly amid our current funding nightmare. It’s a one-two punch considering, the following:
Spending Requirement: Districts must use at least 55% of the funds generated by the CTE weight on CTE programs and related expenditures for grades 7–12.
Re: CTE
Posted by BDSO on 4/10/2026, 12:13 pm, in reply to "CTE"
For about 15-years now. it's nothing new. We were able to deal with it by letting the 6th and 7th graders have two electives. That was until this year when they decided that one was enough. We literally had the beginner band numbers cut in half and lost a good chunk of 7th graders. The same thing is happening next year. There is no solution other than a) getting more elective spots in the schedule or b) convincing the district to get rid of CTE classes in 6th and 7th grade. You could wait it out until the coding and robotics classes become obsolete because AI will start doing those real-world jobs as well, but by that time the robot uprising will be in full force. All these kids in robotics classes are going to be are glorified mechanics for our mechanical overlords.
But, in all seriousness, I can't compete with the robotics and coding teachers who lets the kids play games, gives them days off, and let's them drink energy drinks and eat Takis. We even have kids dropping athletics for CTE classes.
Re: CTE
Posted by Former Small Town on 4/10/2026, 8:57 am, in reply to "CTE"
When I was in my previous district, we had a MAJOR push for CTE. We went from Band, Art, Theatre, Career Investigations, PE/Athletics...to offering 25 different electives through specific designed pathways starting for 6th graders. We only had 450 students on campus AND some of these classes students had to travel to either the HS or another building close to downtown.
We had to start 5th grade recruitment early! October-ish. I took my JH bands there for a Fall/Halloween performance and we started visiting their classes around January and start instrument testing beginning of February.
We were fine as long as we were getting 45-50 students, some years were worse than others. This worked for a few years since we had the kids every day in a 90 minute block. All Beginners, Non Varsity and Varsity bands for that long. Until my final year we were told to help enrollment in the other classes, the NV and V classes were going to every other day. Because obviously offering that many electives to 450-475 students was not the issue...
It is hard to compete with these classes in the eyes of both the parents and students. In the end, cater to the kids who choose band and make them wonderful musicians. I was still able to be successful with my smaller bands and my successors are still successful. Unfortunately, this fight is all over the state and will only become a bigger fight.
Re: CTE
Posted by Former Small Town Part 2 on 4/10/2026, 1:39 pm, in reply to "Re: CTE"
Forgot to add that some of the courses added were the following Outdoor Adventures (counts as PE but you can only imagine the S-Show this is)
Law Enforcement Class (Students travel off campus to the towns Police Department for class......)
Culinary (another one that travels off campus to the newly built cafe/classroom building near downtown)
Pre-Education & Pre-Nursing - for students interested in either pathway in high school. Nursing I get because I went to a school years ago where Nursing was a primary program and we had students get real experience. But the education pathway....yeah right.
Wood Shop - This one hit home for me and I was thoroughly excited this was brought back, but the "funding" received from having more CTE programs did not go here for the first 3 years and they were using equipment that was not up to code and old. Super Dangerous.
What I am getting at is I am all for these programs, as long as it freaking leads to something the kids are able to benefit from. What it ends up becoming is a super dumping ground for students who have no earthly clue what they want to do or they simply do not care about school to begin with.
Districts benefit financially more if the students make it to the 3rd and 4th levels in HS. If they don't and are simply bouncing between intro classes, district ends up losing money in the long run.
Rant over. God speed.
Re: CTE
Posted by Gold in them thar hills on 4/10/2026, 8:50 am, in reply to "CTE"
The reason for the push is that there is a lot of funding pouring in for those classes. More classes, more dough...and maybe *some* of it will actually be spent on CTE stuff (read: no oversight). Only a complete DA of a superintendent is going to turn that money down (ours massively cut our CTE program, and we lost quite a lot of money...so I'm familiar with that kind of a super.).
Career Ex., like Art, is a hard one to compete against (that's the one class our super didn't cut)....once the kid discovers they can get a 100 for minimal effort that's where they are headed, and no trip to Disney World 3 years down the road will sway them, they just know they don't have to sweat anymore.
