Recently a new “wall-to-wall” MYP (Middle Years Program) has been proposed and decided upon at Claremont High School. This would force every student to take MYP classes without a choice. Set to start in the 2025-2026 school year, Claremont high will now only offer MYP classes for freshman and sophomores and no longer offer traditional college prep courses. The MYP or Middle Years Program is supposed to be an alternate teaching style and environment for certain students to learn in a more “internationally minded” way. One of the main aspects of the MYP program is that it only works for certain people and helps students who may not succeed in regular classes. By forcing everyone to take MYP classes the entire purpose of the program is taken away. MYP is technically considered the most “rigorous” course at CHS for freshman and sophomore but that is only because Claremont High completely got rid of the honors program. Now Claremont High is planning to get rid of traditional college prep classes. Doing this would require teachers to change their teaching practices as well as adopt an MYP grading system, commonly called the eight point scale. This decision was a vote by teachers and other school personnel, forced upon them by the school board and administrators. The results of this vote only had a majority of 60.3% of people vote for this change, and after talking with the MYP coordinator, she believed a 60% majority was enough to change the entire teaching system within the school.  We don’t believe that such a close vote should change everything especially since this vote was done without input from parents or students. To combat this we are starting a petition and peaceful protest done completely by students. This is to fight against eliminating non-MYP classes (rigorous college prep courses that prepare for AP classes) for freshmen and sophomores, and therefore to fight against eliminating our choice. We need to act now so we can make it a choice on what classes students can take. This is a petition to make the Claremont school board offer both regular college prep courses and MYP courses at Claremont High School. Please join us in the fight in making MYP a choice. Our petition is open to all current and incoming CHS students for the 2025-2026 school year. The results of this petition will be shown at a future school board meeting.