The LZHS Board of Education voted on October 27 to change the Driver’s Education class structure and to allow freshmen to enroll in Driver’s Ed.

The vote came after the PE Department pitched several changes to the Driver’s Ed. program at the October 13 Board meeting. These changes include making Driver’s Ed. a semester class instead of two separate quarters and opening the program up to freshmen.

“Right now [there] is a quarter of classroom and then a quarter of Behind the Wheel. We feel that it would be more educationally sound for our students to have the classroom and Behind the Wheel going together,” Tom Reagan, Driver’s Ed. teacher, said. “We used the example of science. [It’s as if] one quarter they’re going to learn about the [science topic] and then the next quarter they’re going to carry out that stuff and apply it to a lab, so they could have forgotten the information.”

Reagan said this semester-long class will give the students and teachers more class time to go in-depth on more aspects of driving. The change will also allow teachers the time to teach and use more technology in class.

“Right now we do stuff with technology, but we’re so crammed with time, it’s hard to try new things…to take a whole day and teach someone how to use a specific type of technology or something like that,” Reagan said.

The most important benefit of the semester class will be the ability for students to learn skills and rules in the classroom, then go out on Behind the Wheel courses and practice the information right afterwards, Reagan said.

In addition to a semester-long class, starting next year the program will now be open to freshmen instead of just sophomores.

“We’re losing a lot of students to private [driving institutions], and we feel that we can give our students better education than the private schools can,” Reagan said. “We see the bulk of our kids going private because they want their license right away. So another part of this whole proposal would be that we proposed to open it up to freshmen to get those kids who are leaving.”

The program will open to freshmen in their second semester, after many of them have turned 15. Anyone whose birthday arrives later than that would take the course during the first semester of their sophomore year, according to Reagan.

“We just have to look at how many freshmen are eligible because you have to be 15 in order to take the classroom, so we’re going to have to look at how many can we realistically get in to classrooms for that,” Todd Gregory, department chair of Health, Physical Education, Driver’s Education, Family and Consumer Science, said. “We will probably have to inform the counselors…they’ll get a list of who’s eligible, and then we’re probably going to have to get the word out.”

While the details are not yet completely in place, the PE Department is confident these changes will make teaching students to drive more efficient, convenient, and effective for students and teachers alike.

 “I think it’s going to be a huge impact,” Gregory said. “I think we’re going to get a lot of students in the building to take Driver’s Ed.”