The Los Altos High School administration has changed the course selection process this year, and navigating the changes has caused confusion among the student body as a result of the propagation of rumors and inaccurate information. 

We sat down with Principal Tracey Runeare and Assistant Principal Fabian Morales to clarify the details and reasoning behind everything that’s changing — and everything that’s staying the same.

Selecting Classes

This year, students will select their courses during individual meetings with their counselors, which will last 15 minutes for freshmen and sophomores and 30 minutes for juniors. This marks a change from the previous system, when students manually entered their classes on the Aeries platform.

During the meetings, students will discuss their past transcripts, graduation status and social-emotional well-being. Based on their past work and conversations with their counselor, counselors will advise students on their course selection.

Morales said that the administration made this change so that students would have the opportunity to talk to someone with accurate information and a big-picture view concerning graduation requirements, college requirements and a student’s ability to take on different course loads. Counselors also have information from department coordinators about class pathways that students can access in the future.

“[It’s] the idea of having someone who can help the student look at it from a 10,000 foot view,” Morales said.

Ultimately, though, the student determines the final course selection, and counselors cannot override a student’s choices.

While counselors were available for students before this change, Runeare said that making time for every student to meet with a counselor reduces the issue of counselor accessibility.

According to Morales, increased counselor involvement in the course selection process also helps foster a relationship that lends itself to better decisions and more resource availability for students.

“This feels like a really wonderful opportunity for students to be able to work and create even stronger relationships with their counselors that they didn’t have built into their school year before,” Runeare said.

Underclassmen began meeting with their counselors on Jan. 24. Juniors will begin meeting their counselors on Feb. 26.

Reverse Verification

The week before spring break, students will receive a letter to their homes with their selected courses.

This allows parents to be informed about students’ course selections and ensures that students can initially address any changes they want to make before the school year starts in the fall.

“That’s another point where we can have parents come in and have a conversation between … the counselor, the student and the parents to clarify what sequence of courses or any additional information that they may have,” Morales said.

While parents were able to come in to meet with counselors in prior years, the changes being made to the process this year give parents a specific window of time after spring break in which counselors are available and can check in with parents about their child’s schedule.

Morales also said that in previous years, students were adding or dropping classes that their parents didn’t know about; the reverse verification letter addresses this by directly involving parents in the conversation.

After spring break, students can inform their counselors of any classes they want to change on their schedule.

Those changes would previously be made on Aeries directly, without consultations with a counselor, which meant that students could accidentally remove a class that they needed for a college application or even to graduate.

“If students make changes on their own after those meetings, they may be unintentionally undoing something that they didn’t know about,” Runeare said. “We’re just building in another point of support when they come back after spring break.”

Dropping Classes

Next fall, students will still be allowed to drop and add classes as long as there is space in the desired class. Counselors will meet with the student to discuss the schedule change and, if possible, accommodate the change.

This was the case in previous years at Los Altos High as well, but due to the other changes to the course selection process and some oversimplifications, students were informed in their counselor presentations that they would not be able to drop classes at all.

Runeare said that the miscommunication may have stemmed from the fact that if a class is full already, students cannot be guaranteed the ability to drop and add classes in the fall.
“If there is no space in a class … it’s not being evaluated subjectively,” Runeare said. “Objectively, there is no space.”

Morales emphasized that student schedules are created to intentionally balance the odd and even schedules. When a student tries to switch classes, it can shift multiple classes, creating an imbalanced schedule where all of a student’s most difficult classes fall on one day.

In this situation, Runeare said the costs might outweigh the benefits of switching, which could deter a student from switching to a more desirable class.

Additionally, given the work counselors do with students when selecting courses in the spring, Runeare expressed concerns that students may drop classes in a moment of panic without considering the reasoning behind their initial choice in the spring.

Ultimately, though, she stressed that the student would make the final decision on whether or not to drop a class as long as there is space.

“We don’t want … a student who just says, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m in too deep, I made a mistake, I need to switch,’ and we agree, but the answer is no, because there’s no space,” Runeare said. “That’s heartbreaking, and we don’t want that to happen, so as much as possible … we would make a schedule change.”

Morales said that he hopes students will consult counselors and teachers such that they can make a more informed decision on whether or not to drop classes. He said it is important that students have a chance to get to know the class before deciding to drop it.

“We want to make sure that [students and teachers] have an opportunity to get to know each other and know that it seems overwhelming, but the teacher is here to guide you through this whole process,” Morales said. “Let’s figure out what it is about the course that’s making you nervous, and then from there be able to make a decision.”

The new course selection process, which involves an initial counselor meeting in the spring, can be beneficial for this, Morales said. This way, the counselor can recall how the student felt about the course initially and look from every angle at their decision to drop the class.

“We really dive deep into what is it that’s happening in the class that’s preventing you from being successful,” Morales said.

During course information week, many students were told during counselor presentations that they would not be allowed to drop classes in the fall of the 2024-25 school year. Runeare said that this was a simplified explanation of a policy that is not changing.

“[This] has been the policy for a long time, and yet there have been some schedule changes that have needed to happen in all the circumstances we’ve just talked about,” Runeare said. “We could have been a little more clear, we probably could have included some more of these details … to support the counselors in those presentations.”

Audition Classes

Audition classes — which generally refer to any class with an admissions process — are being re-evaluated by the administration to ensure that they are not creating unnecessary barriers.

“The word audition was being used in a lot of different ways, and that word didn’t really fit the description of what the selection process was for that course,” Runeare said. “‘Audition’ is traditionally used as a performing arts term. Our intention … was to try to prevent students from feeling like there was a barrier to them selecting the course on their schedule.”

Runeare said that teachers with admission-based classes such as Advanced Scientific Investigation and Broken Box Theatre Company, would be revising the process such that students interested in trying out feel more capable of doing so.

“The way [they’re] looking at it is, ‘How do I support students who want to take this class?’” Runeare said.

Although teachers and administrators are reworking the framing of audition classes and the processes behind each application and audition, the classes themselves will remain selective; not all students who put an audition class on their schedule are guaranteed to be in the class next year.

No changes have been made to the process for any sports tryouts.