Hamilton’s Student Advisory Council Completes First Meeting
Leyten Flood
Hamilton High School’s Student Advisory Council is a club that meets every two weeks to gain student insight on topics under discussion by administration. This club is composed of 14 students and the principal of Hamilton High School, Mr. Bauer.
Students within this club have a range of involvements, including DECA, Peer Leadership, Student Ambassadors, Cross Country, Track, Soccer, Drama, HOSA, Tennis, and many other extracurriculars. Each student comes from a different background and has different perspectives, creating a more representative group of the whole student body. Students were selected by teachers, and those who showed continued interest were selected to be a part of this committee.
Previous meeting topics last year included discussions of the safety and organization of the parking lot, graduation cords, teacher interest day, and course offerings at Hamilton to name a few. In order to keep the student body of Hamilton better informed, this series will highlight some of the discussions in the advisory group after each meeting.
On October 6, the council had their first meeting of the school year with many new advisory student members. Within this meeting, the main topic of discussion was the progress in decision making on the Advanced Placement courses being offered at Hamilton for the year 2026-2027, and if there are alterations in running length of any courses.
The AP classes currently in consideration for changing to a one semester course are AP Literature, AP Language & Composition, AP Biology, AP Chemistry, AP US History, AP European History, AP Statistics, and AP Art & Design.
Many students within the council have taken one or more of these courses and raised concerns about dropping them from two-semester courses to one. Overwhelmingly, students within the committee were against dropping many of these courses from two semesters to one.
One concern amongst many of the students are complications in completing the curriculum in one semester; a few cited the extensive labs you must complete for AP Biology and the 500 years of history you must cover for AP U.S. History.
Some students argued against the notion that cutting two semester courses down to one would allow for more space to schedule additional AP courses. They explain that the coursework per day for a student would be doubled; therefore, it would be likely for them to take extra focus periods in order to complete their coursework instead of enrolling in additional courses.
Although there may be students who believe that these changes could be beneficial to students, this group, strategically picked for their strong representation of the student body as a whole, holds major concerns for future students and their success in shortened AP classes.
