The Bellevue School District is considering a slew of new and altered high school graduation requirements following legislation passed by the state earlier this year.
Revisions to Policy 2410, also known as graduation requirements, were adopted by the school board in March and created an advisory committee to review the potential changes and identify whether the needs of the students were being met.
After meeting regularly from May through August the group’s analysis was presented to the board for review and is now being passed along to parents through four community forums being held in area middle schools.Last week the board revealed its proposal for updated requirements and will be hosting listening sessions and forums this week.
Forums will be held this week on Tuesday at 4 p.m., at Tillicum Middle School’s library and at 7 p.m., at Highland Middle School’s library. For parent’s who can’t make either of those times, two additional sessions will be held Thursday, Oct. 16, at 5 p.m., in the Tyee Middle School cafeteria, and at 7:15 p.m., at Chinook Middle School’s cafeteria.
Bellevue School District’s communication director Elizabeth Sytman said the forums offer parents the opportunity to voice their opinions on the proposed changes and be further involved in their children’s education and the future education of students in Bellevue.
Currently the Bellevue School District’s credit requirement exceed that of the revisions, and the committee was tasked with determining whether those should be changed along with changes to the state graduation requirements which take place starting with the class of 2019.
Preliminary recommendations include: maintaining the 40 hour community service requirement; eliminating the 2.0 grade point average minimum and the culminating project beginning this year, but the BSD culminating project, which includes writing an essay in the student’s junior year and completing “Project Citizen” in their senior year will remain.New for 2019 graduates is the addition of another science credit and another art credit, along with two credits of world language.
Physical education and or fitness credit requirements will be reduced by half of a credit, but students will still be required to fulfill 3.5 credits of social studies, according to the proposal.Once additional community feedback has been heard and reviewed the committee will finalize its recommendations and proposed changes to Policy 2410 for the board to consider.
The first reading of the proposed changes is slated for the Nov. 4 board meeting, and a second reading after the board’s considerations is scheduled for the Nov. 18 meeting.
For more information or to submit a question, comment or suggestion, email harrisonj@bsd405.org.
