Pelham Memorial High School will not be offering eight classes next year due to low enrollment and budget constraints. The courses include Film Studies, French (Syracuse University Project Advance), AP Art History, Advanced Photography, Advanced Computer Graphics, Physical Education Challenge and Skill, AP Environmental Science and Science of Coaching.

Superintendent Dr. Cheryl Champ confirmed the dropped classes in an email interview and said they are anticipated to return in future years..

The average number of student requests for the eight classes was ten, said Champ. But enrollment in a class is often less than the number of requests due to scheduling restrictions, making it likely the sections would be smaller than ten. The board of education’s guideline for minimum enrollment in a class is 15.

“While in some years, we have had the ability to run some classes smaller because we have had available staff, we will not have that flexibility next year,” said Champ.

The lack of flexibility is due to the proposed budget, said Alexander Wolff, the district’s public information officer. “We, like all districts, are seeing rising costs in various areas including in health insurance, transportation and utilities,” he said.

Wolff said the proposed budget does not fill some vacant positions caused by retirement, reducing overall staffing. That was one of the steps taken to insure the budget is compliant with the state tax cap. The reduced staffing combined with low student interest made it impractical to run the eight classes, he said.

In addition, the district has opted to replace Humanities Research—an effort to replicate the successful and popular Science Research program—with AP Seminar, a class on how to write and present at the college level, while also adding dual-enrollment Astronomy as a new course.

In the middle school, Mandarin for sixth graders will not run due to low interest. An additional section of Eighth Grade Studio in Art is being added because of demand.

“It’s important to know that this list of courses that are not running is not set in stone,” said Champ. “We will continue to review course requests, student schedules and class sizes to finalize our offerings before the start of the school year.”