Royal High School to add new classes
CHERYL SCHWEIZER | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 6 months AGO
New classes will be added at Royal High School over the next two school years.
COURTESY PHOTO/ROYAL SCHOOL DISTRICT
Senior Reporter Cheryl Schweizer is a journalist with more than 30 years of experience serving small communities in the Pacific Northwest. She began her post-high-school education at Treasure Valley Community College and enerned her journalism degree at Oregon State University. After working for multiple publications, she has settled down at the Columbia Basin Herald and has been a staple of the newsroom for more than a decade. Schweizer’s dedication to her communities and profession has earned her the nickname “The Baroness of Bylines.” She covers a variety of beats including health, business and various municipalities. | March 3, 2026 6:36 PM
ROYAL CITY — Royal High School will be expanding its class offerings for students in the 2026-27 and 2027-28 school years. Kaiden Garcia, RHS counselor, said the subjects were chosen after a survey to determine which classes students want to take and teachers want to teach.
“Everything is really driven from student interest and what students want,” Garcia said.
Royal School Board members approved the additional classes last week. Seven are being added to the Advanced Placement curriculum and include college as well as high school credits.
Royal Superintendent Roger Trail said district officials want to keep challenging RHS students; additional classes, AP and otherwise, are one way to do that.
“That’s one of the things that works to increase our rigor,” he said
The new AP classes will include calculus, physics and psychology, an art studio class, research and business with personal finance instruction. The advanced careers in education is the next-level class after careers in education, which is being added back into the curriculum.
The creative writing and mythology class is in response to student interest, Garcia said. A new wind ensemble class will be added to the music curriculum. An accounting class will be offered in the career and technical education curriculum.
Two social studies classes, one on civics and one on contemporary events, are being revised to fit better with existing state standards, Garcia said. A geometry and two algebra classes will be prerequisites for the AP program.
Gauging student interest is only half the equation, however. Before there can be a class, there must be a teacher to teach it.
“We definitely make sure we have the teachers before moving forward,” Garcia said.
There’s a teacher interest survey to go with the student interest survey, Garcia said. Most of the time the teachers have similar interests to the students, the creative writing and mythology class being an example. Royal teachers have been willing to take on the challenge of AP classes, she said.
Advanced placement classes require additional training, along with a lot of preparation, Garcia said.
“That’s kind of a shift in their work culture,” she said. “A huge time commitment is part of it.”
Which classes are offered and when will depend on student enrollment, Garcia said.
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