MSJ implements 6 new courses for the 2026-27 school year

By Staff Writers Cecilia Cheng, Aarav Vashisht & Lucas Zhang

As course registration season approaches, MSJ is introducing seven new courses to its course catalog for the 2026-27 school year, including AP US Government and Politics and AP English Language and Composition. This decision has sparked discourse within the MSJ community on whether these courses were a positive addition.

To align with course opportunities given to students across the district, MSJ is introducing six new courses. AP US Government is taken with college prep Economics, while AP English Language replaces English 11 Honors. Although AP US Government and AP English Language have been offered at other FUSD schools previously such as American and Irvington, this upcoming school year is the first time they will be available at MSJ. “I believe we were the only school that was not offering AP Government, and so, I wanted to offer something that students and parents were interested in, and it was already offered at other schools in FUSD,” Assistant Principal Jeana Nightengale said.

 With these new course offerings, some students are glad to have more opportunities to take challenging humanities courses on campus. “I’m really excited to see that these courses are finally coming to MSJ. I’ve always been more interested in the humanities, and [MSJ] is very much a STEM-focused school … so there weren’t many options for me to explore, especially when selecting classes,” Junior Kaiwei Parks said.

The introduction of new AP classes have allowed students to expose themselves to the material and expectations of college courses. “Originally, I was planning on taking only [English 11 Honors], but I’m deciding that I’m probably gonna take the AP English instead. That’ll be more helpful, because it’ll help me learn more about college-level literature instead of just honors,”  Sophomore Minlu Zhao said.

Despite support from across MSJ’s student body, students have expressed their concern for the removal of English 11 Honors. Specifically, some juniors  enrolled in English 11 Honors believe that because teachers would have to comply with the standardized AP curriculum, the American literature aspect and the potential rigor of the course may be jeopardized. “[English 11 Honors] is a rigorous course where we dive into a lot of books, while AP English Language is more focused on writing essays, and I’m not sure how the teachers will integrate that … English 11 Honors has been a static course for many years, and now they’re changing it,” Junior Roshan Annamalai said.

However, because students often select more advanced-level AP classes, the administrators have stressed the importance of student interest over academic rigor. “I’m hoping that it doesn’t have too much of a negative effect, but we don’t know. I do hope that students will still consider that they should be taking classes that really interest them above trying to take as many AP classes as possible,” Perez said. 

Similar to the replacement of English 11 Honors, MSJ has offered the Newcomer ELA series in the past under a different name to support the campus’s English learners. The Science Department chairs created the Science Lab Technician position as an extension of the Chemical Technology assistant option. Nightingale stated that the department made this move as a response to a restriction to Chemical Technology technicians that allow them to only assist teachers with chemistry credentials, whereas the new position allows students to assist any science teacher at MSJ with lab work.

The new courses have been met with both enthusiasm and concern from the MSJ community. “It’s nice to know that they’re trying to branch out what kind of electives we have, into what we could possibly see in the future, in our lives, jobs, because — let’s be honest here —  APs are not going to take us anywhere except for college. So to see that there’s more hands-on electives and more, ‘creative’ electives, I think it’s a great addition,” Junior Katelynn Tran said.