In Sept. 2022, Governor Newsom signed Assembly Bill (AB) 1705 which cuts traditional prerequisite math courses at California community colleges. Changes made to Fresno City College’s offered coursework will officially be implemented, in the fall 2025 semester.
AB 1705 will place STEM majors who are required to take calculus, directly into a first semester calculus course instead of taking precalculus courses beforehand. California lawmakers have passed the bill with hopes that students pursuing STEM degrees will be able to graduate faster as a result.
Math instructors at community colleges across the state have protested the bill, claiming that it would deprive students of the building blocks necessary to succeed in college level calculus.
FCC’s math tutoring coordinator Heather Walker believes debate about whether the bill is good or bad is unproductive. Instead, she wants to focus on how FCC can adapt to this new mandate and ensure student success.
“I have mixed feelings [about AB 1705], but our [focus is] more on what we as a college can do,” Walker said. “Our efforts have been focused [less] on how we feel about it … it’s more about what are we going to do now that, we’re faced with this?”
Walker is aware that the tutorial center will likely see increased demand for math instruction outside the classroom, and she is already laying plans. “We have a jumpstart workshop that we [will] offer students starting in the fall. It’ll be a three-day workshop where we cover the prerequisite skills, kind of like a refresher for students,” she said.
FCC also plans to respond to AB 1705 by submitting a new course structure plan for review by the district and the state, Walker said. Although Math 4A and 4B (the current trigonometry and precalculus courses) will be cut, FCC is drawing up plans to create a new Math 4 class that will be offered in conjunction with Math 5A, which is equivalent to Calculus I.
Laurel Blackerby-Slater, who teaches Math 3A and Math 4A this semester, is spearheading the math department’s implementation of AB 1705 from within the classroom. While she believes the planned Math 4 course is “a step in the right direction,” she also noted that the course is not available to everyone who may need it.
“[AB 1705] only allows us to offer that course to students with [a high school] GPA of 2.6 or below if they haven’t had any preparatory coursework: either precalc, trig, or calculus. Suppose a student who got a 3.0 and took precalculus in high school 10 years ago came back to school — they’re not allowed to take that Math 4,” she said.
The resulting concern is that students will be left with significant educational gaps.
“For a person who wants to be a STEM major, now [they] come to city college and… have to go straight into calculus without any prep … [it] feels a little bit too short of a path to me,” Blackerby-Slater said.
According to her, the biggest challenge presented by implementing AB 1705 has been “figuring out how to deliver instruction differently to help students be successful when they’ve got such an abbreviated opportunity… to be prepared for calculus.”
AB 1705 will go into effect in July 2025. This means that STEM majors desiring to enroll in current precalculus courses at FCC should plan to take them in either spring 2025 or during the first summer session of 2025.
