Credits for foreign language and wellness classes will be shuffled in the high school’s graduation requirements in an effort to provide students with more flexibility in course choices.
Principal Stacey Gross presented her proposal, along with assistant superintendent Kimberly Beck and assistant principal Stephanie Parker, to the Board of Education on Nov. 12.
She said the changes would promote a more inclusive schedule for students that would allow more opportunities within the career and life skills cluster of their graduation requirement.
The board voted unanimously to approve the adjustments for the class of 2016 and later.
The total credits required to graduate at the high school will remain at 25, but the modifications will include:
• World language credits will be applied to any of the following clusters: career and life skills, humanities or open; not under their own world language cluster
• Students will be required to take only 0.5 wellness credits during their senior year as opposed to taking one full wellness credit
The later amendment resulted from student feedback forms, revisions made to the school’s advisory program, and the introduction of the student success plan at the middle and high school levels.
Freshman students will still be required to take .5 health credits.
In total, students will still need 3.5 career and life skills credits, 9.0 humanities credits and 8.0 credits of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
The difference lies in the number of open credits needed to graduate, increasing from 2.5 to 4.5 with the elimination of the world language cluster.
World language will be required for freshmen and sophomores, and it will be recommended as optional for juniors and seniors.
From a year to year perspective, credits will not change with freshmen and sophomores required to take seven credits each year to advance and juniors and seniors needing six credits each year to graduate.