Beginning in the 2026-27 school year, Gunn High School is adding Advanced Placement Business with Personal Finance to its catalog of AP courses. The class will be open to 11th- and 12th-grade students who have taken prior business courses at Gunn High, such as Principles of Business or BEAM (Business, Entrepreneurship, and Math).

The course is designed to equip students with the skills they need to build their own businesses and careers, according to its description in the Gunn Course Catalog. The curriculum will cover principles of entrepreneurship, marketing, finance, accounting and management through case studies and projects.

Gunn business teacher Khoa Dao said the idea for the class came when he received a promotional email from College Board’s AP Career Kickstart, a program that designs high school courses in career and technical education fields. The email discussed two potential upcoming courses: AP Business with Personal Finance and AP Cybersecurity.

Dao said that in the past, students have selected the computer science pathway, which contains many AP and Honors courses, over the business pathway — partially due to a desire to maximize their GPA.

“I … understand that not everyone is STEM or computer science oriented, so I thought it would be a really cool opportunity to be offering another class in the business pathway that’s also an AP class,” Dao said.

After communicating with College Board, Dao presented the idea to the department chairs of the Palo Alto Unified School District School Board. According to Dao, the course, originally available to freshmen and sophomores, received some pushback from the board due to its accessibility to younger grade levels and thus was changed to accept only juniors and seniors.

“The idea is that AP Business is supposed to be accessible, and anyone should be able to take it,” Dao said. “But the school also doesn’t want to overload students in freshman and sophomore year. … It’s already stressful enough.”

Dao said that he hopes the new course will incentivize more students to engage in Gunn High’s business course pathway, allowing them to potentially discover their passion for business and pursue it following high school.

“When students find something at high school that really makes them click, and they can fully realize their potential, it’s an awesome thing to behold,” Dao said. “I hope AP Business will help students feel much stronger coming out of the class.”