Take classes at Kentlake High but also earn college credit.

Students have long earned credit through Advanced Placement exams. More recently, though, Kentlake has offered University of Washington classes — as do all of the high schools in the Kent School District — in United States history, Spanish, French and last year oceanography was added to the roster.

But, in the next two years, there will be more UW choices at the high school that draws students from Covington, Black Diamond and Kent as school officials work in partnership with the university to launch an accelerated program at Kentlake that will allow students to earn at least a year’s worth of college credits on their high school campus.

“We’re interested in increasing those (classes) to offer students really high quality instruction,” said Kentlake principal Joe Potts. “The idea is to offer kids the opportunity to earn the equivalent number of credits here at Kentlake that they would get if they went to Running Start. My idea is to build this as an academy so they could earn 30 to 60 credits… so that it could be a passport for them if they wanted to apply for UW or any other public school in the state or any other state school in the country.”

Potts explained that it will allow kids at Kentlake the opportunity to study with teachers like Mike Shepard, who teaches UW U.S. History, and Marla Boyd, who teaches UW Spanish 103, whom he described as “talented and deeply committed” teachers.

Shepard, who used to teach AP U.S. History, said there are a number of advantages to offering UW courses at Kentlake.

“We have a number of kids who are exploring the idea of college, so, having a college curriculum in the building gives them an idea of the course content and the rigor that they’re going to be exposed to,” Shepard said. “We’re serving a greater number of students with the UW curriculum. I used to teach AP US History and we had very small numbers involved in the class because of the overall difficulty of the exam.”

Shepard said it mirrored the district’s curriculum but because it’s a university quarter’s worth of material done over the course of the school year, “it allows us to pace is so they can be successful.”

The UW class also exposes his students to materials they may not see until college because of “the resources that the students use.”

“They’re using college text books picked by the UW and approved by the school district,” Shepard said. “They have a greater diversity of experience. We read a historical novel called ‘No No Boy’ that offers a perspective on Japanese internment that we wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. Our students gain a broader perspective of the civil rights movement. They’re offered a greater number of perspectives that they normally wouldn’t see.”

Another advantage, Potts said, is that Kentlake staff can offer more support to students than they may get in a Running Start program at a nearby community college.

“We don’t have our kids fleeing to go to Green River,” Shepard said. “It takes away from our sections, in all honesty. We’re a service oriented community… and we have to provide something that students want to take.”

Boyd also sees the UW classes as an opportunity to encourage advanced students to stay connected to their high school while still taking rigorous courses.

“For me one of the important things about offering more UW course selections here, sometimes I as a teacher have felt that we’re losing some of our strong teachers to the Running Start program,” she said. “It would be nice to have them on campus for all or part of the day.”

It’s also an opportunity to raise the bar academically.

“It is a means of improving the school culture, raising academic expectations, offering kids a world class education,” Potts said. “We talk about it all the time but, here it is… if you want a world class education, here is the method, here is the pathway.”

Boyd said that while the content in the UW Spanish course is not dramatically different from the high school’s Spanish 5/6 equivalent, the focus of the curriculum is different, being “very communicative… listening, speaking, conversing.”

“That’s the big focus, getting kids comfortable speaking and interpreting the language,” she said. “The whole idea is that we’re trying to have our students have the same experience here that the students on campus are having so that when they do get to college they are well prepared.”

Matt Sturtevant, a math teacher at Kentlake, will be one of the department’s instructors taking on UW pre-calculus.

“The main reason to add the pre-calc is it gives kids another opportunity to earn college credit,” Sturtevant said. “There’s no way for kids to earn the credit in the current pre-calc.”

The UW curriculum will supplement the existing coursework, with that integration making it more challenging, plus the bonus of earning college credit, too.

“I don’t see a downside to it,” Sturtevant said. “It keeps some of our strongest students coming to Kentlake instead of going to Green River. It’s disappointing to lose a lot of the upper level kids.”

And it’s not just about appealing to the top tier of students at Kentlake, Potts said, but to students who on paper appear to be in the middle of the pack, to challenge them with more rigorous courses in an effort to better prepare them for life after high school.

But, how do you get those kids to sign up?

“The No. 1 challenge will be to convince kids to challenge themselves,” Potts said. “That’s going to be our No. 1 focus. During registration we’re going to tell kids the stakes are high. What they do is important, we will help them and we will not give up.”

DeAnn Dige, a business education teacher who has taught at Kentlake since it opened in 1997, knows the utility of getting kids into courses that will expose them to career pathways.

While teaching at Kentridge she had a student who was dead set on becoming a chef. She encouraged him to take a culinary arts class in high school to make sure that is what he wanted to do.

As a senior, Dige said, he took her advice and discovered it was nothing like he thought it would and thanked her for helping him find out before he enrolled in the college culinary arts program he had already been accepted to in Seattle.

Next year, Dige will teach a UW class called Fundamentals in Technology (FIT), in addition to accounting, computer applications and digital design.

“This new class is exciting for me because it’s something new and something different, it’s change and in this area things change all the time,” she said. “There’s a little bit of programming in it. There’s a little bit of applications in it. It’s one more option available for the kids. And we’re modeling it after the program that’s currently offered at Tahoma High School.”

She encourages her students to take these classes so they can explore in high school where they have a bigger safety net.

“Expand their horizons and let them know what’s available and out there so that when they get to that college level they can make more informed choices so they know what to do there and they’re not fumbling around,” Dige said. “I’m excited for the new opportunity. It will be fun for me as well, learning something new and sharing it with the kids.”

Plus, FIT will be something students can use as they work on their culminating project.

“One of the components of that is technology proficiency broken into seven different components/artifacts,” Dige said. “The UW FIT class will help students meet/complete several of those artifacts – providing one more step in the completion of that graduation requirement..”

Potts is excited about the program, which he described as a work in progress, and other potential opportunities that come with it.

Boyd and Shepard said their students are also excited about and have embraced the UW classes.

“Dr. Potts is really excited to get a UW Spanish 201 class (at Kentlake),” Boyd said. “Most of my third year kids that are juniors are also excited about it.”

But Potts also knows there will be a challenge for some students who want to take these courses and earn the college credits to afford the tuition costs, which while lower than taking a course on the UW campus, are still higher up front than other options.

“My goal is to provide any kid, not just the ones who can write the check, the opportunity,” he said. “My commitment from the moment we started having conversations with the University of Washington where we would have an equitable environment where no one would be turned down the opportunity. I am going to work night and day as the principal to make sure any kid who wants to can.”