Monday night, Richardson ISD trustees met to discuss the state’s new graduation requirements and their impact on students. Tuesday morning, they updated the RISD website to share that discussion and announce their recommendation. It’s been a summer of surprises and the RISD had one of their own – delay adoption of the new rules for a year, keeping the requirements for health, speech, technology, and PE in place.
You’ll recall that the Texas Legislature recently passed House Bill 3, which aims to give students more choices in their course selections by eliminating several requirements and making room for more electives. Commissioner of Education Robert Scott surprised educators by making those changes effective immediately
More, after the jump:
Deputy Superintendent Patti Kieker is the district’s point-man on HB 3, and she’s been researching the issue since the bill passed in June. “We’ve never changed graduation plans without community input and without a phase-in period to have the right staff in place,” she told me. “We want to give the board time to study the issue and decide what graduation plans they want for RISD. Districts have always had the power to adopt our own graduation requirements above and beyond what the state requires.”
If the district adopts the state’s changes immediately, it could wreak havoc on school schedules and teacher allocations. According to Kieker, 2600 kids have signed up to take health this year and 2100 are currently enrolled in technology. If they all show up on the first day of school wanting a schedule change, there is no way to accommodate them all. And wholesale changes would leave some teachers with nothing to teach and others with overflowing classrooms. Teacher contracts have already been signed and few good teachers are available at this late date.
When news of the newest rules became public, some families dropped summer school and correspondence courses with glee, taking off for summer camp, family vacation or other summer break activities instead. A few didn’t even wait for a refund, they were just grateful to skip a class they thought their child didn’t need. Now the seniors may be stuck. There’s no room for these courses in their 2009-2010 schedule, but the chance to take them in summer school has passed.
“What the state has done is put us in a precarious position,” said Kieker. “We always put our students first, and we want them to have the flexibility to take the courses that interest them. But our staff is like family. When courses are eliminated, teachers will be affected, and we need some time to phase that in,” she said. “We also want to hear from the community,” Kieker added. “Does the community value flexibility of students choose their courses or does it value health instruction, computer literacy, and physical fitness instruction.”
The board has not taken action yet. They are currently weighing Kieker’s recommendations and surveying what other districts in the state will be doing. At this stage, it appears that most large districts like ours will wait to phase in changes. If that happens, some LH seniors will be scrambling to take required courses online or before the start of the school day (zero hour). “We will accommodate them,” Kieker said, “and make sure they graduate.”
