The Carbon School District Board of Education has changed the number of credits a student needs to graduate from high school and approved a new diploma that the district can award for basic credit completion.
The move was to align the district with state requirements for graduation, something many districts across the state have been doing in the last year. The state requirements say that a student must have 24 credits, 18 required and six electives, to earn a diploma. A graduate of Carbon High School still needs 30 credits, but now there will be a new option.
With the policy changes made at board meeting, the district will be awarding three diplomas and one certificate for completing high school.
The new requirements say that to receive a diploma from Carbon High School will still be 30 credits; 20 basic credits and 10 electives. However, the district will also award a diploma, that will be called a Carbon School District Optional Diploma, to students that complete the basic 24 credits. The district already offers a diploma similar to this concerning total credits, but it is to students who graduate from the Lighthouse High School, and that diploma comes from Lighthouse.
The deliberation raised some questions. One of the questions was if the optional diploma would allow students to graduate as early as their sophomore year. It was also voiced that requirements for this diploma might be lacking the real work it takes to graduate by other students who are there to get the 30 credit graduation document. However that idea was dispelled by Carbon High’s Principal Bruce Bean.
“A student who went this route would have to work very hard to graduate, even as early as their junior year,” Bean told the board. “There are a lot of classes that are sequential and students would not only have to plan carefully to get done that soon, but would also have to work very hard to do it as well.”
The board spent a lot of time examining the idea of changing the requirements and decided that a diploma that was awarded for 24 credits should come from the district rather than from one of the high schools. However, the Carbon School District Diploma will be presented to students during graduation from Carbon or Lighthouse graduation ceremonies.
Students can also receive a certificate of completion from the high school if they attend up through their senior year, even if they don’t earn all their credits. This has been standard practice for some years, but the certificate is not a diploma, the board emphasized.
In the past five years the parameters of public education and graduation requirements have changed a great deal in Utah. Charter schools, home schooling and going to school on-line have changed things for public education. The state and the local boards are trying to deal with the reality of parental and student choice by making changes to their requirements for graduation.
The changes in the policy take place immediately.
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