The Moon Area School District will get a new high school in January, and a renovated middle school will follow.

Will the curriculum also be renovated?

The school board Monday night discussed adding a period to the school day, adjusting graduation requirements, adding more electives and advanced courses, emphasizing critical thinking skills, expanding online offerings, expanding the performing arts, and blending material typically offered as electives into core courses.

The board didn't come up with a specific plan, but superintendent Donna Milanovich said she would create committees to explore some of the possibilities.

What was clear was that the board wants to see Moon Area listed among the area's top districts and it wants to do that by offering useful education.

"We've got to prepare kids to go out in the world and be independent," board member Nick Pollack said. "We need to teach them something they're going to use down the road."

The discussion started with a presentation by Dr. Milanovich and high school senior principal Michael Hauser. Dr. Milanovich had put together "education trend committees" of teachers and asked them to look five years into the future and predict how their material would be taught.

"I think it was a real eye-opener for our teachers," she said. "Many of them said they hadn't thought about the future that way."

Mr. Hauser, meanwhile, looked at the course offerings, schedules and graduation requirements of some well-regarded schools in the region.

"I think that we have allowed ourselves to fall a bit behind the curve," he said. "We should have some goals of doing a bit more."

Several board members bristled at his wording.

"We're not falling behind by educational standards," board President Mark Scappe said. "We're graduating a lot of bright students who are going to some of the best colleges in the country."

Mr. Hauser said his primary concern is that the seven-period day limits the number of courses students can take, pushing ambitious students into summer school or online courses to get everything they want.

"I would like to offer robotics to more of our kids," he said, "but you put that in a seven-period schedule and it pushes kids out of other things that are of value."

Mr. Scappe raised the possibility of having different schedules on different days, with shorter periods and extra offerings on some days and longer periods for a deeper focus on other days.

Mr. Pollack, meanwhile, advocated a focus on depth rather than breadth.

"I think we can get too carried away adding to the curriculum," he said. "I think we should focus on developing critical thinking skills in the core curriculum."

An example he used was teaching students to use word processing and spreadsheet programs in language arts classes, rather than as a separate elective. "You teach spreadsheets, but as a tool," he said.

Another way to expand the district's offerings is through online courses. Dr. Milanovich raised the idea of using a service called Waterfront Learning, online coursework through the Allegheny Intermediate Unit.

Through Waterfront Learning, a district can offer anything from online courses to gifted students to a full-blown cyber school.

Dr. Milanovich noted that last year, 22 Moon Area students opted to attend Lincoln Park Performing Arts Charter School and 27 went to the PA Cyber Charter School, both based in Midland. That represents about $500,000 in tuition the district must pay.

"With some of the things we're doing -- offering online courses, building a beautiful new high school with a nice theater, maybe expanding our theater offerings -- it seems to me we should be able to get some of them back," board member Jerry Testa said.

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