Area high schoolers get early jump on college credits

Area high school students earned 300 college credits last year, according to school officials.

In the school year of 2015-2016, Libby High School students earned 139 college credits, and Troy High School students earned 170, according to the Libby and Troy High School principals.

According to Troy Superintendent and High School Principal Dr. Jacob Francom, in total since 2013 Troy students have earned 400 college credits, and in the 2015-2016 year alone, 170 college credits were earned. Last year through the Libby Flathead Valley Community College’s Running Start program, 139 credits were given out to 21 students at Libby High School in a variety of classes including race and gender, welding, finance, composition and many more, according to Libby High School Principal Ruth Vanworth-Rogers.

The college offers the first six credits that the students take free. After the first six credits, the high schools pay for the majority of the cost, according to Francom.

Troy and Libby high schools have offered a variety of Running Start, Digital Academy and AP courses in the last four to five years, including classes in multiple foreign languages, physical education, emergency medical technician training, college composition, speech, accounting and many more for-credit courses, Vanworth-Rogers and Francom said.

Running Start courses are graded differently than regular high school classes. Running Start students’ grades are weighted, meaning a B+ grade means an A+ for the class. A student with an entire report card of ‘As, which includes Running Start courses, can have higher than a 4.0 grade point average.

Professors from Flathead Valley Community College teach the courses every day. At Libby High School, students are currently taking vocational accounting, three separate welding courses for dual credit. In Troy, students are taking public speaking and English composition, which had the highest number of student enrollment in a Running Start course through Troy with 21 students, Francom said.

The Montana Digital Academy classes provide students with a long list of classes in many areas of interest. Many of the Troy and Libby students use these for credit recovery, but some take them for their language courses that are not offered through the schools, Francom said.

“We’re always looking to expand the classes for students depending on their interests,” Francom said.

While AP courses are different than Running Start and last the entire year, students can earn credits through those by scoring a three or higher in their end-of-year assessment score. Libby offers AP U.S. history, government, English language composition and language and literature.