Cutting Back on Classes?                             By: Elyse Ganzer
	Imagine yourself sitting in a class at school learning how to drive. You don’t have to spend a fortune to learn how to drive. Imagine yourself taking your artistic views and putting them on shirts or stickers. These electives are important to us, they give us a place to go and let our brains relax from the lectures of our previous period. Electives have a great impact on students, and sometimes they increase our GPA. These classes are being cut for a reason though.      Before I had my interview with Ms. Eves, my knowledge of cutting back on classes was much uninformed.  Most students think that these classes are being taken away because of budget cuts, but there are more reasons than just that.  When I went to my interview, I had made a list of five different classes that have been cut within the past five years.  Driver’s education, graphic arts, woodshop, photography, and Latin were the list I had made.  Most people don’t think much of driver’s education anymore, but the reason for it being cut 5 years ago was not because of budget, it was because not many students signed up for it anymore and we were the last school in the district to carry that course.  Graphic arts have had many rumors as to why it was cut.  Most of those rumors are wrong.  Graphic arts was cut because it was not part of the A-G requirements, not as many people were signing up for it, and the teacher was leaving as well.  The other 3 courses were cut mainly because of the lack of enrollment.        Not a lot of students know that the school has added more classes than dropped.  Ms. Eves informed me that the school has added about seven AP classes, and ceramics.  All of the electives we have left are part of the A-G requirements and will help our future immensely.  If you wish to get some of these classes back, or in the future save a class from being cut, write to the school board, or the superintendent, or start a petition and send it to the school board.  There may not be a lot we can do, but if you show interest in a class and show that there is a lot of interest, the school might make adjustments.