Ag academy takes root at SVHS

After months of speculation, Sonoma Valley High School has announced that next year it will offer a Sonoma Academy for Sustainable Agriculture program for interested sophomores.|

After months of speculation, Sonoma Valley High School has announced that next year it will offer a Sonoma Academy for Sustainable Agriculture program for interested sophomores.

The school’s existing “engineering pathway” program will also be renamed the Engineering, Design & Technology Academy, effective immediately. Beginning in the 2015-16 school year, all sophomores will be given the choice of enrollment in one of the two academies or continuing with the traditional course offerings and scheduling.

Andrew Ryan, vice principal at Sonoma Valley High, said administrators put a lot of thought and consideration into establishing the new academy.

“We looked at our existing courses and facilities and talked to our staff,” Ryan says. “The high school has a long history of robust agriculture program offerings, so some form of ag academy was always a front runner. Exactly what form it would take took a while to decide.”

In the final stages, Ryan met with community partners and studied local employment data to ensure that the new academy had a relevant, forward-looking business focus.

A typical academy consists of four core components: academics, a complement of three or more related technical courses; a series of work-based learning opportunities; and support services including counseling and supplemental instruction. For sophomores in the agriculture academy next year, it will mean choosing an English, history and math class plus taking agricultural biology, plant/soil science and P.E.

Team leader Felicia Rush and the agriculture teachers are hard at work determining the three-year curriculum plan for the academy. The junior-year course will focus on viticulture and the senior-year course will relate to ag business.

“The exact plans are still being worked out,“ said Ryan. “It is a scheduling challenge.”

Sonoma Valley High won a grant for more than $50,000 to cover the planning stages, and the school is waiting to hear on several promising Career and Technical Education academy grant proposals.

The recent freshman “Team Fuji” hog project is a micro-example of what the sustainable agriculture academy will attempt to accomplish. This fall, the 110-member team purchased a hog. In math class, the Fuji students calculated the financial and product yield of the hog. In English class, they wrote about the project. And the animal husbandry of raising and caring for the pig took place during P.E.

When the hog was ready to go to market, the most excited potential buyer was culinary arts teacher Jonathan Beard. Last week, along with nine of his students, Beard brought the hog to a mobile butcher to be cleaned and to Broadway Market to be broken down into “primal cuts.” Back in the culinary arts classroom, his advanced students learned the ins and outs of breaking down the pig into smaller butcher cuts and then prepared several sausage marinade recipes. The next day, the Fuji students, in groups of 25, were invited in to see the sausage being ground, mixed, stuffed into intestine casings and grilled. (Check out media art teacher Peter Hansen’s video of the process: vimeo.com/119652092)

Ryan said that when combined with a business plan on the economics of the farm-to-market process, this hog venture is a good example of the kind of cross-curriculum project that the high school hopes will be the centerpiece of both academies.

Beard is excited about cross-over between the culinary and agriculture classes. “The hog project was truly farm-to-table,” he said. “I would much prefer to procure our meat and vegetables right here on campus, and my students learned a lot from the project.” Beard also buys chickens from the ag students and, this year, his chefs-in-training butchered and plucked the chickens in preparation for their use in specific recipes.

“It’s exciting to see students make connections between school and life,” said Rush. “Regardless of their career interests, these students can honestly now say they know where their food comes from and they can start making educated decisions about what to purchase at the market.”

The naming switch from “pathway” to “academy” is a result of Sonoma Valley High School’s decision to change over to a curriculum endorsed by the National Academy Foundation (NAF). NAF also has a strong local connection in that new Sonoma resident and powerhouse philanthropist Sandy Weill was one of the founders of NAF and he continues to chair its board.

The Engineering, Design & Technology Academy at the high school changed this year to a Project Lead the Way curriculum endorsed by NAF and the engineering team teachers are hard at work identifying a work-based learning project similar to the agriculture hog project for their students who will be seniors next year.

Any sophomore can enroll, whether or not they declared an interest in agriculture in their freshman year. It remains to be seen how many will sign up for SASA. According to Ryan, at any given time, as many as a quarter of all Sonoma Valley High students are taking an agriculture-related course at SVHS. Ryan concedes that the new academy may see more initial demand than the engineering academy, which currently has 68 students across three grades.

According to Ryan, no other academies are planned at this time. He said that the school is eager to balance its desire to offer academies with the popularity of its existing elective offerings (enrollment in an academy typically prevents students from taking other electives).

Kathleen Hawing, SVHS principal, said she is excited about the national momentum behind high school academies.

“Sonoma Valley High is part of a larger movement nationwide to create smaller learning communities within the high school setting,” said Hawing. “This is an exciting time to be a Sonoma Valley High student.”

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