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Students get a leg up on higher education

Staff writer

High school students around the county are able to enroll in classes that give them a leg up beyond high school.

Advanced placement classes are college-level courses that students can take during high school and result in credits they can apply to college degrees.

Common AP classes include arts, computer science, English, history, math, sciences, social science, world cultures, and world languages.

Hillsboro High School principle Tyler Weinbrenner likes students to have the opportunity.

“I think it puts our kids in a good position, where they can take their general education classes and walk into college with some credits,” he said.

Hillsboro High also offers a two-year welding technology program through Hutchinson Community College. Students from other districts in the county also enroll in that program as well.

Six Hillsboro students, juniors and seniors, are enrolled. Studying welding in Hillsboro allows them to earn professional certificates and go to work without going through a four-year program, Weinbrenner said.

“They earn a certificate and take it to an employer and show them they are ready to go and get hired,” Weinbrenner said.

Hillsboro High offers AP classes to seniors, primarily in cooperation with Tabor College. The school also offers courses in cooperation with Hutchinson and Butler community colleges.

Hillsboro seniors may choose college composition, sociology, history, and psychology,

“The two classes we offer for dual credit with Tabor are calculus and algebra,” Weinbrenner said.

Three students are taking calculus classes, 17 are taking college composition, 15 are taking college sociology, and 16 are taking college history, he said. Sociology classes will become psychology classes for the spring semester.

The classes are taken remotely in the school’s media center.

Another technology program HHS offers is a certified nurse assistant program through Butler Community College. Two students are enrolled this year.

“I think the perception used to be that people ought to go to college,” he said.

At Centre High School, superintendent Daniel Ackland said, many students take college general-education courses including English, math, composition, psychology, public speaking, algebra, and history through Butler.

“It’s totally up to the student and what they want to do and pay for,” Ackland said.

Juniors and seniors pay $75 to $100 per credit hour for the classes, which are taught remotely by a college instructor.

“Last year, there were 12 in the senior class and half of them took at least one class,” Ackland said. “All finished with a GPA of at least 3.5. The student who earned the most credit hours their junior and senior years earned 45 credit hours. If you take all of our students who take credits, they earned 143 total credit hours last year.”

Some colleges are moving to three-year bachelor degrees instead of four-year bachelor’s degrees, Ackland said.

Centre also offers such an array of agriculture programs taught by its two FFA teachers.

“We send four kids over to Hillsboro for the welding,” Ackland said. “We can offer a CNA certificate but don’t offer one at this time.”

Ackland is analyzing AP and technical education.

“One of the goals that the board of education has given me, as this is my first year, is to examine those programs and see that we are offering what we can,” Ackland said. “We may be small but we want to make sure our kids still have opportunities.”

Last modified Oct. 22, 2025

 

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