Some students, educators and community members are urging the Olathe Board of Education to reconsider a proposal that would move middle school dance and cheer from an elective to an extracurricular activity.
Currently, dance and cheer are only offered as in-school electives during the regular school day, not before or after school. Olathe is the only Johnson County school district that does that.
Marlee Trentham, a freshman at Olathe South, told the board at its Dec. 4 meeting that taking dance classes in middle school made her feel like she had a place in the school, something she doesn’t want taken away from future students.
“When I started middle school, I didn’t walk in with a strong sense of who I was,” she said. “I was nervous, unsure and honestly felt like I didn’t quite fit in anywhere yet. Dance changed that for me.”
The district conducted a broader review of middle school electives
The changes to dance and cheer were part of a larger audit of middle school electives. The district hadn’t evaluated middle school electives since 2010, before current middle school students were born.
District officials spent 18 months working on the proposal and created a committee made up of middle school principals, counselors and curriculum coordinators. The committee also held focus groups and sent email surveys to middle school staff and families.
Rachelle Waters, Assistant Superintendent for Middle School, said elective changes are necessary to create consistency across the district’s 10 middle schools.
Waters said offering students courses that are more relevant now than those that may have been 15 years ago was important to the district.
“It was very important that we give our students that opportunity to have relevant options that are going to help prepare them for the world that they are going to inherit,” she said.
For instance, one proposed change would make the current “Communications Multi-Media” elective into “Media Makers,” where students would learn about “responsible social media and AI use, graphic design and podcasting.”
District officials also proposed retiring other electives, like “Career & Life Planning and Intro to Apparel Production” and “Flight and Space.”
OPS added that staffing, licensure, building space and budget also played a part in their overall decisions on which electives to cut or modify. District officials said that declining enrollment meant the district could not add staff for electives.
Still, the changes to dance and cheer garnered controversy — so much so that Waters addressed it before the presentation to the board on Dec. 4.
“I love and have a passion for our sports and our activities,” Waters said. “And that was never the intent to cut dance and cheer. Nor will we.”
Reason for the change
District officials said staffing and licensure were significant factors in the proposal to switch cheer and dance — which is only offered to seventh and eighth graders— from an elective to an extracurricular.
Most of the district’s current middle school dance and cheer teachers are primarily licensed to teach other subjects. The district argues that having them teach more classes within their licensure areas would better serve more students.
“Seven out of our 10 middle schools have cheer dance teachers who currently can only offer four hours of their license content area, rather than all five hours like their grade-level counterparts,” Justin Howe, executive director of human resources, said.
Howe added that making dance and cheer a before- or after-school program would free up an hour during the day for students to participate in other electives they wouldn’t have otherwise.
“I’m excited about the opportunity to possibly get them involved in a little bit more in the school,” he said.
The district said it considered making dance and cheer classes count towards PE credits, but that would require additional licensure for instructors.
“Only two dance cheer instructors are certified in PE,” Howe said. “If they were to make it a PE class, they would need additional certification.”
Public comment
Board President Stacey Yurkovich mentioned the district had received public correspondence about the changes to dance and cheer before the meeting. Four members of the public attended the meeting to directly address the board.
Courtney Brown, who teaches seventh-grade math as well as cheer at Oregon Trail Middle School, urged the board to keep the elective as is, saying students may lose out on the opportunity to participate in an important activity.
“We are teaching how to work as a team and with people you may not always agree with,” she said. “As well as how to prioritize time, being responsible and positive role models and ambassadors for the school.”
Trentham, the Olathe South freshman, told the board she wouldn’t have necessarily been able to participate in middle school cheer if it had been an activity outside of school hours.
“It meant I didn’t need a ride,” she said. “Didn’t have to choose between dance and helping at home or dance and basketball.”
Superintendent Brent Yeager praised the committee for navigating the cheer and dance decision.
“I also want to commend this team because the conversation around cheer and dance — they knew is not going to be an easy conversation. They knew that,” he said. “The reality is if we ignore hard things, we’re not going to get better,” he said.
Board member Claire Reagan, who is a former dance coach and English teacher, said community members shouldn’t be concerned that the district is looking to eliminate cheer and dance programs across the board.
“There isn’t like a big conspiracy that like cheer and dance, it’s going to trickle up to the high school and go away as a class,” she said. “I can say with certainty that this is really an isolated thing that we’re dealing with.”
The board will vote on the proposal at a future meeting.
