Starting in the 2025-26 school year, the history department is adding two social science electives to their course offerings: Economics and Social Entrepreneurship. These electives will be an addition to the existing history and social science electives, and will allow students to learn more about finance before graduating. 

Both courses have been in the works for a while, with the Sharon and Jacob (z”l) Benus Social Entrepreneurship Fellows Program established this past school year. The fellowship focuses on solving social issues with a product or service. 

According to the curriculum guide, the Economics course will focus on economic principles such as supply and demand, banking and other finance basics. The Social Entrepreneurship course will focus on “key concepts of entrepreneurship,” such as market research and business planning. 

Economics will be available for juniors and seniors to take in the fall, and Social Entrepreneurship will be available for sophomores and juniors to take in the spring.

“We’re constantly looking at what we offer and student interest, as well as what’s being offered in [other] high schools that we aren’t offering,” High School Assistant Principal Aileen Goldstein said. “We want to set our students up to really follow their interests and be able to provide that as much as possible.”

According to Goldstein, discussions regarding the addition of an Economics course have been ongoing for around four years. History Department Chair Carl Atwood has been working on the course content, building a unit schedule and collecting resources.

“I think [the course is] a great opportunity for students to explore more knowledge about the world and how our world works,” Atwood said. “… to position themselves to function in our world that in many ways is very driven by economics.” 

CESJDS will be creating its own curriculum for the Economics course based on other schools’ curricula. The Social Entrepreneurship course will be similar to the Social Entrepreneurship Fellowship, with elements added in order to make it a more customized to JDS. 

“We have the additional level of wanting to make sure that there’s Jewish values infused in them,” Goldstein said. “…So that’s really going to be less about what other courses are out there and how they’re taught, and more about really envisioning [them] for ourselves.”

The Social Entrepreneurship course will allow students who participated in the fellowship to continue working on their projects. It will also give people who weren’t in the fellowship the opportunity to create their own projects. 

“Entrepreneurship is important to me because I like numbers, and so I’m attracted to that idea of business,” junior and Social Entrepreneurship fellow Theo Rothenberg said. “The ‘social’ part of it is that you always want to give back to your community, so I think it’s important to have the classes.”

On top of these new courses, some other changes are being made. All courses currently labeled as advanced are being renamed to honors. This change won’t affect the content of the courses, but how they are labeled in transcripts. Similarly, courses currently called “enriched college prep” will be changed to just “college prep” to make it more simple.

With the addition of these new courses, both Atwood and Goldstein hope that students will be able to learn skills and gain knowledge that will be helpful in college and beyond. 

“It’s a vital part of understanding what it means to be a citizen in our world today, to understand the relationship between individuals, businesses and the government,” Atwood said. “…It’s another lens of understanding human motivations and how we make decisions about how to go about our lives.”