When the 2025 class graduates, the requirement for health and speech classes ends. These semester courses will be offered as credits to fill students’ schedules and elective requirements.
“I would advise students to take them because I think there’s a lot of valuable knowledge in speaking,” Lead Counselor Vorsino said. “I think students definitely need to know how to communicate. I think a public speaking program helps with that. And I think health is also valuable because it talks about healthy living and healthy lifestyles.”
The State Board of Education voted to remove health classes as a requirement in 2012 through amendments to 19 Texas Administrative Code (TAC) Chapter 74, Curriculum Requirements, Subchapter E. In 2013, Texas House Bill 5 removed Speech credits as a requirement at the state level allowing the requirement to be up to school districts, and Mansfield ISD opted to keep the requirement for years past.
“When we were doing registration a lot of students were able to go ahead and start a Ben Barber class, or take another elective or something like that that they really wanted to do,” Ms. Vorsino said. “After [hearing] some students still chose to take [the electives].”
Students need 26 credits as a part of the graduation plans, and health and professional communication will be electives offered to help fill those requirements. Professional Communication teacher Holi Pearson teaches communication skills in an interactive classroom to help students enjoy her class.
“I know that public speaking is not everyone’s favorite thing,” Ms. Pearson said. “It is a fear that everyone has, but once you get to know your classmates, once you get over that fear, it just becomes another thing that you can do, and you need it on your resume. I think that everyone should take my class.”
In Professional Communication classes, students learn the value of nonverbal communication, how to give speeches with inflection and clear articulation and how to interact with others in various settings.
“This [change] scares me,” Ms. Pearson said. “I don’t want to not have my job. I love my job, and it’s the only thing I know how to do, so I don’t even know what I would do without my job.”
The health classes have six units: Healthy Foundation, Physical Health, Injury and Violence Prevention, Mental Health and Wellness, Reproductive and Sexual Health and Alcohol, Tobacco, Vaping and Drugs. Health teacher Amanda Shingleton follows the guide for topics in MISD to inform students.
“I don’t think this is a good thing,” Ms. Shingleton said. “I feel like this is an opportunity for students to learn about life skills beyond the core content or elective-based courses that they currently have, although it is basic on some level, it allows kids opportunities to explore what healthy behaviors are, what risk behaviors are, but more specifically recognizing those in their own lives and or setting up parameters to make healthy choices that set good habits for future longevity.”
Health class allows students the time and resources to research information about their bodies that they may not have had otherwise. The 2024-2025 Mansfield ISD shows that 49.9% of the district is economically disadvantaged.
“Not every home situation is set up with the same accessibility to that resource or knowledge about potentially nutrition or physical fitness and just how to maintain any kind of healthy balance of life and stress management and coping strategies for life,” Ms. Shingleton said, “and not that this class is, like I said, academically straining. It does allow students an opportunity to explore these areas that are going to impact them, not just now, but futuristically as well.”
Both elective credits help students in the real world and with long-term education, in the same way as elective classes like Money Matters. Not requiring these classes comes down to allowing students to fit more electives of their choice into their schedule and making sure that all students receive their CCMR point.
In addition, all Pre-Calculus classes will now be weighted with AP Pre-Calculus keeping the name and curriculum and Pre-Calculus switching its title to Advanced Pre-Calculus with the curriculum remaining the same.
“I think [the decision] was probably a lot of the CCMR,” Ms. Vorsino said. “If you don’t take anything in eighth grade, and then we double block algebra one, it limits your electives, especially if you want to be in one of those tracks at Ben Barber, it kind of limits what you have access to and being able to complete a whole track. I think that’s where the decision came from.”
