Review for Unit Assessment: U.S. Federal Budget, State Budgets, and Local Municipal (County) Budget process. Discussion of how municipal budgets are established by City/County commissioners in conjunction a mayor. Requests for additional Municipal funding often occurs through a Voter Referendum . Review of numerous key terms and specific budget processes.

Exponential Functions and Equations: Modeling constant growth rates and/or decay rates. Various worksheet practice problems with constant percent increase or decrease: Determining growth factors and decay factors. Begin review for Unit Test.

Ben actively engaged with me regarding an article we read exploring how wolves were gradually domesticated into modern dogs. We reviewed his answers to comprehension questions, on which he answered all the questions correctly. Our subsequent discussion covered the genetic and evolutionary mechanisms behind domestication, including how humans and early wolf populations may have developed a mutually beneficial relationship over thousands of years. A highlight of the session was Ben's strong critical thinking skills around selective breeding. His contributions and higher-order thinking showed solid application of core STEM concepts including natural vs. artificial selection, genomic variation, and heritability. Ben demonstrated highly effective comprehension of how genomic data can be used to reconstruct evolutionary history, and he made several meaningful connections between genetics and real-world biology throughout our exchange. Ben was amenable to a follow-up last article to review in tomorrow's (last) in-person session together.