Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Graduation Requirements topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Teachers, parents and students urge board to keep health and ethnic studies as requirements
Summary
Multiple teachers, counselors and parents told the board that shifting graduation requirements toward A–G and adding AP/honors options risks tracking, harms students who benefit from health classes, and could push vulnerable students out of a Piedmont diploma without clear alternative supports.
Teachers, parents and students offered sustained public comment opposing changes that would remove universal requirements for health and ethnic studies and urged the board not to accelerate weighted course offerings without deeper collaboration.
A longtime teacher who identified as Doctor Marks told the board faculty were ‘taken very much by surprise’ when the packet revealed eight proposed new courses and warned that the proposed changes could "do real damage" by bifurcating classes and tracking students into different paths. She asked the board to "hit the brakes on this mad dash to completely altering the culture of our school." (speaker identified in transcript as Doctor Marks.)
Counselors and department members said health courses serve vulnerable students as both instruction and informal wellness supports. As counselor Chris Hartford put it, without that class "we're gonna miss those kids." Several teachers and the history department chair welcomed the board’s decision to pause AP World History so teachers, parents and the board can discuss course scope and pacing.
Sam Colburn, a Piedmont High teacher, warned that raising the math graduation requirement from two to three years could put some students at risk: "I fear the students who do not choose 0.333 year of math find themselves at risk of not graduating." Public commenters urged the board to define any alternative completion process explicitly to avoid unintended consequences for students with different learning needs.
