POULSBO — During the past five years, North Kitsap High School’s graduation requirements have changed five times, as it has been handed down new state and federal requirements.
Each year, the North Kitsap School District board of directors must then determine how it might impact student and staff schedules — as well as their learning experience.
“Every year I’ve been on the board, I think we’ve changed the graduation requirements,” said director Catherine Ahl, who was elected to the board in 1999. “It’s ridiculous. We’ve got to get it right one of these years.”
During a Thursday study session of the newest requirements, the school board heard from Wally Lis, NKSD director of curriculum and assessment, who explained how a new mandate from the federal No Child Left Behind Act will affect the class of 2011.
Beginning with that class, students will be required to complete a .5 credit course in technology literacy. At NKHS, that class would likely be added to the freshman roster of courses — but the board isn’t scheduled to take action on the matter until later this month.
With the addition of a third math credit requirement passed by the board last year that means that the NK class of 2011 will have only five elective credits available through its high school career. This year’s graduating class has had eight.
“It’s very true that (students) are not going to have the scope of choices they used to,” director Dan Delaney said.
“There’s two philosophies here,” Lis said. “One is to fulfill the NCLB requirement; two is the question of are we teaching technology literacy to a group of students who will be using technology for the rest of their lives.”
The logic behind the requirement is that, for a student to compete in the workforce he or she must be literate in computer technologies. Therefore warranting the need for a .5 credit — or semester class — focused directly on that subject.
However, the NKSD board was quick to point out that not every student may need an entire semester of the class to learn those skills.
“We have to create a common class that allows us to teach technology to all students, no matter if they have technology at home or not,” Lis said.
He said — pending board approval — there could be a way for students to test out of the class by proving competency on a pre-exam.
That would be a significant gain toward satisfying one of the district’s guiding principles — which were set out as an educational road map by the district in 2002. This would be one of the first examples of students earning credit for competency, board director Ed Strickland said.
Following discussion on that topic, the board also touched on a new health and fitness .5 credit requirement that is being piloted for seniors at North beginning this semester as well as a .5 credit decrease for Career and Technical Education and the culminating senior project — which is new requirement for the class of 2008.
Time expired on the study session before the study was complete, so the board agreed to hold one more study session on the matter before taking any action. Lis cautioned about delaying the matter as this year’s eighth graders will need to know their requirements before registering for high school classes in March.
