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Board approves high‑school credit changes to increase CTE and arts flexibility
Summary
The board approved changes to graduation requirements to allow greater use of career-technical and visual/performing arts coursework to meet state-aligned credit requirements and to add a half-credit of financial literacy for the Class of 2028.
The Wayne-Westland Community School District board unanimously approved a set of high-school credit modifications intended to give students more flexibility in meeting Michigan Merit Curriculum requirements.
Administrators told trustees the changes do not reduce the total credit requirement (22 credits) but alter how some credits may be earned. The board approved allowing career and technical education courses at the William D. Ford Career Technical Center and specified visual, performing and applied arts (VPAA) virtual courses at Wayne-Westland Innovative Academy to meet certain graduation standards.
Interim Executive Director of High School Programs Mrs. Polakovich, who presented the proposal, said she was “not looking to decrease the number of credits, at all. Just what makes up those 22 credits that we are asking our students to earn.” The recommended changes include:
- Science: retain biology and allow students to meet subsequent science credits with chemistry, physics or approved CTE courses rather than requiring two specific science sequences. - Social studies: implement a half-credit in financial literacy for graduates beginning with the Class of 2028; trustees were told that the district will fold that half-credit into economics coursework. - World language: permit one year of world language plus a CTE course or additional VPAA coursework in place of two years of a single foreign language. - Physical education/health: allow one semester of health and substitute the physical-education credit with participation in two seasons of varsity athletics or marching band where appropriate.
Polakovich said the changes are intended to align district requirements with state guidance while expanding pathways for students who pursue technical careers or arts programming. Trustees and staff discussed standards alignment, work-based learning elements in CTE classes and the importance of counseling students who are college‑bound to take two years of a foreign language.
The motion to adopt the high-school credit modifications and to approve the listed VPAA virtual courses at WEA passed on a 7-0 roll call.
