Your school can teach that.
Get the class addedPicking up where you left off.
We’ll look up the people who decide what your school teaches — the counselors who own the course catalog, the district curriculum office, and the dual enrollment coordinator — plus the community college nearest you.
School not in the list (middle school, private, outside the US)?
Every email on this page uses whatever you type here. One specific course beats “more options” every time — a name is something an adult can say yes to. Don’t know exactly? Put your best guess in and change it later.
Go read the course catalog first
Your school publishes one, usually as a PDF on the counseling page. Open it and write down:
- Every AP, honors, or advanced class listed. How many are there?
- Which ones actually ran this year? The catalog lists courses that haven't been taught in years.
- What's the highest class in the subject you care about, and what comes after it? (Often: nothing.)
- Does the catalog mention dual enrollment, concurrent enrollment, or early college?
- Now open the catalog for the biggest high school in your district and compare.
You want a sentence like “the other high school in our district offers fifteen APs and we offer six.” That sentence starts a conversation. “We should have more classes” doesn’t. Come back and pick whichever of the four above matches what you found.
These two look like the same request from outside the building. Inside it, they are nothing alike, and knowing which one you’re asking for is most of the work.
Adding an AP or honors class
Your district decides- Real cost
- One teacher’s class period. That’s the whole ask, and in a budget year it’s a big one.
- College Board
- The course audit is free. A teacher submits a syllabus, an administrator approves it.
- Timeline
- About a year. Proposals are usually due in December for the following fall.
- Hard gate
- A qualified teacher already on staff who is willing to teach it.
Realistic when the class needs no lab and a teacher already there can teach it. Asking for a brand-new teacher is a much bigger ask than students expect.
Adding a college-credit class
Your school and a college decide- Real cost
- Close to nothing. The college employs and pays the instructor.
- School pays
- Textbooks and a room. Students usually pay nothing at all.
- Timeline
- A semester or two. Often no school board vote at all.
- Hard gate
- A college instructor willing to come teach at your school.
This is the open lane, and almost no student knows it exists. If your school is cutting its budget, this is the ask that can still get a yes.
Before you email anyone, find out what’s already there
Half of these campaigns die because a student asked for something the school technically already offers, or asked the person who doesn’t decide. Fifteen minutes of reading prevents both.
- Your school’s course catalog, and one from a bigger school in your district. Count the advanced classes in each.
- Does your district already have a dual enrollment agreement with a college? Search your district name plus “dual enrollment.”
- If it does, which courses are on the approved list? Districts usually approve far more courses than any school actually runs.
- Is there a teacher at your school who could already teach what you want?
- Has anyone asked before? Check school board minutes for the course name.
The best thing you can find: a course your district has already approved that your school simply doesn’t run. That turns the ask from “approve this” into “schedule this,” which is a much smaller word.
Worth knowing What a new class actually costs
Adults will tell you a new class is expensive. Sometimes that’s true. Often the expensive part is one thing, and you can ask for the version without it.
- AP course auditFreeA teacher submits a syllabus and an administrator approves it. There is no fee.
- Teacher trainingOptionalThe AP Summer Institute costs several hundred dollars but is not required for most AP courses, only for AP Capstone. Don’t let it be quoted at you as mandatory.
- TextbooksVariesNot required to be new. Most humanities courses can run on books the school already owns for year one.
- Lab equipmentReal moneyLab sciences genuinely cost thousands. This is the one that makes AP Biology, Chemistry and Physics hard to add.
- Exam feesPer studentAround $99, reduced for students who qualify for free or reduced lunch, and often subsidized. Taking the class never requires taking the exam.
- A class periodThe real costNot on anyone’s price list, and it’s what your principal is actually deciding.
So the cheapest possible AP ask is a class with no lab, taught by a teacher already on staff, using books the school has. If that describes what you want, say so in the first email.
Worth knowing Why timing decides this more than arguments do
Getting a course approved and getting it to run are two separate wins, about six months apart. Students win the first and lose the second all the time, because a course nobody requested gets cut in the spring no matter how well it was approved.
If you are reading this in spring, you are not too late — you’re early for the year after. Start now and you get the December deadline instead of missing it.
This is the entire campaign. Schools don’t add classes because a class sounds good; they add classes when enough students would fill the seats. Your survey is the proof, and it’s the number every email below quotes.
It’s five questions and takes a minute:
- Agree or disagree: classes at our school are boring.
- Which subjects do you want more AP or dual enrollment classes in?
- Would you show up to school more often if you had classes you were excited about?
- Eighth graders only: are you thinking about leaving the district for ninth grade, and would interesting classes keep you?
- Anything else you want to say about what classes you want?
Question three is the one that moves adults, because attendance is money — districts are funded on how many students show up. Question four is the strongest one on the form if you can get it answered: a district losing eighth graders to another school is losing funding per student, and the class you want is cheaper than that.
It opens in Google Forms as your copy, under your account. Nothing you collect comes to us, and responses are anonymous unless you change that. Hit Send inside Forms to get the link you’ll share in the next step. That last question is the one that surprises people — it usually turns up two or three courses with more demand than the one you started with.
Group chats, your story, the people you sit with at lunch. Hit the grades below you hardest — a class added next year is one they can take, and administrators know it.
Paste your form link where the message says to. 30 responses is enough to argue with. If you can get a number like “41 students would take this,” you have more than most course proposals ever show.
These are in order for a reason. Do them in order.
Optional, later Nobody replied. What now?
Normal. Teachers and administrators get hundreds of emails and yours is not on fire. Three things that work, in order:
- Wait a week, then reply to your own email. Not a new one — reply, so the whole thread is right there. Two sentences: “Following up on this. Happy to come by if that’s easier.”
- Go in person. Email is for the record. Decisions get made in a doorway. Ask the counseling office when the person is usually free.
- Add a teacher to the thread. An adult who says “I’d teach this” changes a student request into a staffing question, and staffing questions get answered.
If three emails and one in-person ask have all gone nowhere, that’s your signal to go to the school board. That’s the next step.
You emailed, and weeks went by. The board is where this stops being a thing your principal can sit on: public comment goes in the minutes, and the minutes are public forever. What you need is your survey numbers, the dates you emailed people, and two minutes at the microphone.
It opens as a printable page with your survey numbers, the course you’re asking for, what it costs, who you’ve already contacted and when. Save it as a PDF: that’s the handout for board members and the attachment on the follow-up email.
Still nothing? Reach out to us: we can help with funding, navigating school politics, and changing school culture.
our school doesn't offer [class] and i'm trying to change that
this is a 1 minute anonymous survey about what classes we actually want. i'm taking the results to admin, and if they don't do anything, to the school board.
[paste your form link]
fill it out even if you're graduating. the whole argument is how many of us would take it, and freshmen and sophomores count double because they're the ones who'd still be here.
if you know any 8th graders, send it to them too. there's a question just for them and it's the one admin can't ignore.
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