A Ramapo or Indian Hills student who wanted to try psychology used to give up a full year of an elective slot to do it. This year psychology runs a semester, and so do economics, marketing, music theory and sixteen others — which the district says lets the same student try two things instead of one.

That conversion was part of the 2026-27 curriculum Darren Groh, the district's director of curriculum and instruction, laid out at an Aug. 24 public hearing the Board of Education had noticed for that purpose.[1][2] Superintendent Shauna DeMarco introduced the recommendations as "grounded in student need."[3] The district says the change produced "three to four hundred additional seats in elective courses" across the two buildings.[4] The board approved the year's new and revised curriculum unanimously that night, as part of a single motion covering 46 items — the same motion that adopted "all current written curriculum guides, courses, textbooks, workbooks, and any other ancillary materials on file with the Superintendent."[5][1]

Ramapo Indian Hills is a regional district, serving Franklin Lakes, Oakland and Wyckoff students in grades 9 through 12.[6] Wyckoff eighth graders are not assigned to a building by address: they choose between Ramapo and Indian Hills.[7] Wyckoff's K-8 district sets its own curriculum separately.

Full-year courses became semester courses

Groh said the reasoning was arithmetic. At five credits and a full year each, "students would only have a limited number of options to choose from over their four years in high school. By creating those courses into semesters we essentially doubled the opportunities."[8]

The courses he listed as converting:

  • English — audio and film editing; TV studio production
  • Social studies — economics, psychology, sports history, law and human rights
  • Science — anatomy and physiology 1 and 2; forensic science, split into Introduction to Forensic Science and Forensic Science: The Crime Scene
  • Business — Accounting 1 and 2, marketing, introduction to business. The department also added a new semester elective, Introduction to Investing[9]
  • Family and consumer science — the whole department, including Advanced Culinary Arts and Child Development
  • Music — music theory

But not every course runs in both buildings

Board member Joseph Valenti asked whether the new offerings are "equally balanced between the two high schools."[10][11] Groh said they are "offered in both high schools if they do run" — and that Indian Hills "has probably about a handful of courses that didn't have the enrollment." Where Ramapo differs, he said, is in running additional sections, because it has more students.[12]

Valenti pushed back with a specific case: "not having accounting here in Indian Hills is a big deal," and students had raised it. Groh answered on enrollment. A student can now try Accounting 1 without being "locked in for the year," he said, and he hopes that eventually produces "multiple sections running in each of the courses." The exchange ended there.[13]

Senior English was rebuilt around a research course

Seniors used to pick two semester English courses separately, and Groh said the courses "weren't married together," so a student would get one choice and then "have to select something that they really didn't initially choose."[14] Now every senior takes a research-based seminar — pick a topic, research it independently, write it up, present it — paired with a themed second course. The options are Choices & Chances, Pop Culture Edition, Monsters, Mayhem & Madness, Writer's Toolbox and Honors Humanities.[15][16]

New AP courses

The district added four Advanced Placement courses.[17] Two are new nationally: the College Board is launching AP Cybersecurity and AP Business with Personal Finance in 2026-27.[18] Groh said both were "well subscribed" at each high school. AP Environmental Science was added as a third tier of the existing environmental science sequence, and AP World History as an elective — the first time either building has run it.[17]

You can read the curriculum yourself

The district "revised or created 69 courses between the spring and the summer," Groh said, and moved them onto Atlas, a curriculum platform the board approved last year that puts every course on a common template.[19]

The result is a public curriculum preview site, with a summary video of the changes in each department, a four-and-a-half-minute explainer on how to read a curriculum document, and links into Atlas for individual courses.[20][21] It has seven department pages; business, family and consumer science and music are grouped together under Visual, Performing & Applied Arts.[21]

The descriptions, units and standards that Atlas holds for each course are not part of the board's own course list.[22] Sixteen courses the curriculum site lists as revised for this year do not appear on it — nine in science, five in math and two in English, including AP Environmental Science, which Groh had just told the board was being added.[1]

What is coming next

The board's Education and Personnel Committee reported that two career and technical education programs are being developed for 2027-28 at Indian Hills: medical care, a two-year program covering anatomy and physiology, medical labs and patient care; and cybersecurity, a two-year project-based program. Groh described the arrangement as a share-of-time partnership with Eastwick, about a year out, that would host the programs at Indian Hills rather than transporting students there, for two to three hours in the afternoon after a morning of academics.[23] "Final logistics and approvals are still pending before the programs are added to the program of studies," the committee reported.[24]