Course Description Guide

Making Course Selections

Students are encouraged to choose classes after creating an academic plan in conjunction with their parents and the school academic advisors. The overarching framework for the academic plan is SCA’s graduation requirements (see page 7). Choosing an academic plan will also entail discussion on career goals, college plans, and student personal interests. Scheduling conflicts may prevent a student from taking a course of choice. Courses may be canceled if enrollment or staffing changes do not permit the offering. Depending on class enrollment, other courses may be combined or regrouped. Administration reserves the right to adjust a student’s schedule. Student schedules are not guaranteed to keep the same teacher or period from semester one to semester two.

Course Changes

Class schedules are determined for both semesters of the upcoming school year prior to the end of the current school year. Student schedules are mailed home in August. To request a schedule change for an academic course, students must fill out a Schedule Change Request Form. This form requires administrative and parent approval. Approved schedule changes may be made through only the first two weeks of each semester.

After the deadline student requests for schedule changes will not be considered without academic penalty. Courses dropped after the deadline will result in a grade of WF (Withdrawal/Failing) or WP (Withdrawal/Pass). Withdrawing from courses may affect athletic eligibility; therefore, athletes must obtain withdrawal approval from the principal, athletic director and college and career advisor. If the course dropped is a year-long course, the entire course may need to be retaken.

Application of Outside Credits (while enrolled at SCA)

No outside course (either through online, summer school, homeschool, or some other method) that is already offered at SCA may be taken for satisfaction of SCA’s requirements without extenuating circumstances and administrative approval. The acceptability of outside courses for SCA credit will be evaluated for accreditation and on its course syllabus, objectives, and expectations. When an outside course is completed, an official record (transcript) must be provided to the College and Career Advisor before it is applied to the appropriate graduation requirement and the student’s official SCA transcript. As a matter of integrity, it is our philosophy that an SCA diploma must reflect an SCA-provided education. It will be rare that an outside course can replace an offered course.

Policy for Recovering a Failing Grade Junior High

Core courses must be made up for an additional fee. Credit recovery courses are during summer break. Attempts to make up a required class outside of SCA must be administratively approved.

High School

Failing a class has at least two serious implications: It drops the cumulative percentage average and eliminates the earning of .5 credit. Although the failing grade cannot be removed from the transcript, repeating the course will count as credit toward that required subject. Whether the class must be taken again is usually dependent on graduation requirements. If the failing grade was in an elective category for which the credit was not needed to meet graduation requirements, the course need not be retaken. However, if the failing grade was in one of the core subjects (Bible, English, Science, History, Math) for which credit is necessary to graduate, then the class