Central Florida schools working to figure out what class will replace AP Psychology

ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — School starts for most Central Florida students next Thursday. Now, administrators and teachers are working up against a deadline, trying to figure out what class can replace AP Psychology.

The College Board says it will not abide by the state’s demand to remove a longstanding section on gender identity and sexual orientation. The organization advised districts not to teach AP Psych.

>>> STREAM CHANNEL 9 EYEWITNESS NEWS LIVE <<<

“Kids have already gotten their schedules. So, we don’t know what’s going on. The school doesn’t know what’s going on. The teachers don’t know what they’re teaching,” parent Judi Hayes told Channel 9 Friday morning.

Judi Hayes’ son was set to start AP Psychology at Boone High School in Orange County next Thursday.

Read: No college psychology credit for Florida high schoolers after clash over teaching about gender

He’s one of the roughly 30,000 Florida students scheduled to take the course this year.

Seminole County announced it would offer an alternative on Thursday, and Orange County says they’re offering other classes that students can take instead of AP Psychology.

Hayes says she’s concerned the alternative classes offered won’t be as rigorous as AP Psych. She calls AP the golden standard for college credit classes.

Read: College Board: Florida schools can’t teach AP psych if sexual orientation, gender identity censored

She says without the rigorous elective on the transcript, her son and other Florida students could be at a disadvantage when trying to get into big name colleges.

“Our best and brightest students aren’t going to be competitive when we’re looking at these top tier schools ... they’re looking at students from Florida, and then students from other states that have had a full opportunity to study every subject with equal rigor,” Hayes said.

Read: College Board won’t alter AP courses for Florida’s law banning lessons on gender, sexual orientation

Orange County says students have four options now that AP Psychology won’t be offered. Students can take another elective, psychology with either the Cambridge or International Baccalaureate curriculums, or AP Seminar.

“AP Seminar has a little bit more room when it comes to psychological elements we can still talk about in there,” said Dr. Robert Hovel, an AP Psychology teacher at Lyman High School in Seminole County.

Read: VP Kamala Harris says she won’t meet with DeSantis about African American history standards

He’s one of the few AP Psych teachers in the state that actually know what they’re teaching next week. Seminole County announced Thursday that students who are signed up for AP Psych this year will be able to take AP Seminar instead.

Hovel says the course overlaps with much of the content in AP Psych. The difference is that AP Seminar does not include lessons on gender identity and sexual orientation.

“I’m an out gay male as a teacher at my school. And for that to be restricting of my students to not learn about something that possibly could be about them as well. It’s again, it’s just asserting their rights. It’s restricting their limits to understanding all knowledge, not just select knowledge. And that’s unfair to our students in a public school,” Hovel said.

Read: Orange County lacks hundreds of teachers as students return to school next week

Hayes says it’s unfair her child and others are caught in what she described as an “invented culture war crisis”.

“Our kids are being used as pawns,” Hayes said.

Hovel says he’s never taught AP Seminar, and now, over the next six days, he’ll be preparing lessons for the rest of the school year.

“It’ll be day-to-day, week-to-week to make sure that I still am following what the Department of Education is saying is appropriate, but also knowing that my kids need to learn certain things,” Hovel said.

Hovel says now is an extremely challenging time to be a teacher in Florida. He says his goal is to be an example for his students by showing perseverance and finding a way to teach psychology in a way that’s in accordance to the state Department of Education.

Video: Florida schools can’t teach AP psych if sexual orientation, gender identity censored College Board said Thursday that it learned that the Florida Department of Education instructed Florida superintendents that teaching about sexual orientation a (WFTV)

Click here to download the free WFTV news and weather apps, click here to download the WFTV Now app for your smart TV and click here to stream Channel 9 Eyewitness News live.

©2023 Cox Media Group