  In the spring of 2018 the Northern California/Nevada section of the American
Association of Physics Teachers was alerted to a local high school's plans to
eliminate physics for the following school year. As part of the campaign to
support the school's efforts to sustain physics in the following year, the
physics offerings from the surrounding schools in that district were compiled.
It appeared that the demographics of the student population in the district
played a role in the number of different physics courses offered within that
district, particularly the percentage of Hispanic students (%Hispanic) and
percentage of socioeconomically disadvantaged (%SED) students at each school.
Concerned that this trend was more widespread, physics course offerings were
reviewed for Northern California public high schools to determine if there were
correlations between the amount of different physics class offerings and these
populations. It was found that %Hispanic and %SED are strongly correlated in
California public schools, and along with number of students, could be used as
statistically significant predictors of a school's physics offerings.
