As the Erie community grows larger, so does the highschool, allowing for more specialized programs to be implemented to benefit our students’ futures. Along with the engineering and aerospace programs, the Erie High School Administration and Counselling team is slowly but surely building a multifaceted business program with the help of partners from FRCC and CETC.
For the 2025-2026 academic school year, Erie High School will be seeing a large influx of more practical arts/elective classes, all relating to one major theme: Business and entrepreneurship.
The process of adding a new class, although not too treacherous, always starts and ends with the students. At Erie, students from all grade levels are required to take an ICAP, or Individual Career and Academic Plan, which lets counselors and administration know what they want to do in the future, and what they might need from our school to help them, “One of the things we’re always doing as an admin counseling team is reviewing our course offerings in light of what our students, A, want and B, need.” Says Assistant Principal, Liz Russel.
With a large student body, various post-secondary paths are expected, one of the most popular, however also most untouched, is the business path. During the ICAP surveys, students report what classes they might be interested in, as well as how much they would benefit from these classes, “One of the things that showed up a lot was a desire for more business classes. [There are] a lot of students who are interested in that for their post secondary goals.” Russel Explains.
However, adding new classes doesn’t just start and end within Erie; partnerships with Front Range Community College and the Career Elevation and Technology Center give students more options as to where and how they want to learn more skills. With Erie’s consistent partnership with FRCC, adding new classes that can also provide concurrent enrollment is a popular way to gain more traction to them, “Definitely looking at icap data and just looking at our students individual career and academic plans and wanting to offer courses that relate to those passions and interests, and then with our strong partnership with Front Range and seeing how they offer some really great business courses, we wanted to really open up those opportunities to our Students to allow them to take business courses and earn high school college credit while still in high school” says Counselor Keri Mitchell.
Besides the various options available for our new business based classes, it all comes back to student involvement and engagement in the classes.
One of the new classes for this current school year is a single semester ardent based entrepreneurship class, which is creating our school store for next year. In combination with the engineering department and practical arts classes, students in this new class taught by personal finance teacher and FCCLA/FBLA sponsor, Steven Aguirre, create school merch such as water bottles and other goods for students, parents, and teachers to purchase. “We’ve got our school based enterprise class, which is the school store, and I’ve been to that class several times, and I’m really excited to hear the student ideas, and I’m very encouraged.” Russel says on the new a school based enterprise class.
However not every class is like the school based enterprise one, some focus on core skills needed to excel in the business world. Public speaking is something teenagers practice around the world, from giving presentations in class to speaking in front of hundreds of their peers at graduation.
However, many struggle with the skill and are interested in practicing/applying public speaking to their daily life. Although Erie already offers speech and debate, along with clubs like Mock Trial and Model United Nations to help with practicing public speaking, this new school year brings in a new class surrounding everything about public speaking.
This will be extremely helpful, as Staff are always eager to get students to learn new skills that they may need in the future, from their personal experience. Even if class sizes are small, the option to take a public speaking class is extremely valuable for all students, no matter their career path, “The first one is going to be the Front Range public speaking course that we’re offering that will be new this year, and I’m really excited about it, because public speaking is a great skill for all students to have, no matter what area they go into after high school. When I was a high schooler, I hated when I had to give a presentation in classes, because it made me so nervous and it just stressed me out. My face would get so red and it would just be so embarrassing. But in college, I had to give a lot of presentations, and that really helped me to overcome my fear of public speaking. And now as a counselor, I have to give presentations to students, to parents, to families, regularly, and I can do it confidently. And so I think providing students the opportunity to gain their confidence when it comes to public speaking sooner in life is just only going to benefit them” Mitchell Says.
As students finish registering for next school year, it’s important to take into account the new classes Erie is offering, and what they may bring to the table in terms of what you want to do in the future. Although signing up for new classes no one has taken before seems intimidating, you’ll never know how the skills they are teaching you will impact your life until they already have.
