Waitsburg School Board Wrestles with Graduation Requirements

WAITSBURG—Most Waitsburg High School alumni over the past couple of decades were required to take a class called “Life Management Skills” their junior year. The class met in the Home Ec lab, a long room in the middle of the building with a row of kitchen stations against the far wall.

Students balanced mock checkbooks, put together hypothetical budgets, learned how to comparison-shop for groceries, and went over the ups and downs of using a credit card. Come test day, they were expected to be experts on everything from car insurance to IRAs, from healthcare costs to the process of consumer complaints.

Life Management Skills – or LMS – is all about equipping Waitsburg’s young people with the practical skills they need to make it in the real world. Yet ironically, as Waitsburg High School faces down the real-world problem of declining enrollment, the only practical choice might be to eliminate this requirement.

At the start of July’s Waitsburg School Board meeting, board member Christy House requested that an item be added to the evening’s agenda. House, whose son attends WHS, said she was frustrated by the lack of options for students at the school, especially juniors.

“Our kids only get two credits that they can choose,” she said.

For most students, this represents an inconvenience. But for juniors and seniors participating in the Running Start program at Walla Walla Community College – which allows those students to attend part-time, earning both high school and college credit – Waitsburg’s high proportion of mandatory classes can throw a major wrench into their plans.

Wondering what the board could do to improve students’ options, House scanned the state guidelines and found that Waitsburg’s graduation credit requirements exceeded the state’s in two subjects: physical education and family and consumer sciences, the newer name for “Home Economics.” By reducing the P.E. requirement by half a credit and making LMS optional, the district could free up two more credits’ worth of elective classes.

LMS is a particularly tricky hurdle for potential participants in Running Start or SEATECH (a similar program at WWCC which focuses on technical skills like nursing, welding and construction). While many of Waitsburg High’s mandatory credits can be substituted with similar community college courses (English 101, for example, instead of the junior-year English), WWCC does not currently offer an equivalent to LMS.

According to House, since Running Start students are required to spend half of every school day at WHS, this means that their class choices are largely dictated by the placement of LMS in the schedule as opposed to which courses they would rather take at each institution.

It’s a difficult position for any ambitious student, she said. Ultimately, many become frustrated and leave the district altogether.

“If we want to keep our high school kids here, give them two more credits that they can choose,” said House.

Earlier in the meeting, Superintendent Jon Mishra gave a brief report on districtwide enrollment for the coming year, which is projected to decline. Declining enrollment in any rural district can hardly be considered breaking news. And while the board reached no definitive conclusions on the best course of action – that will likely be determined at the board’s meeting on Thursday – those present agreed that something needs to be done.

The issue of Running Start, it soon became clear, wasn’t limited to students’ scheduling troubles. The program itself quickly emerged as an area of concern. Part-time students bring less funding to the district than their full-time peers, and with the ever-increasing popularity of the program – a dozen of this year’s incoming WHS juniors plan to participate – Running Start represents a significant bite out of the high school’s budget.

It becomes a sort of vicious cycle – more students enrolled part-time in out-of-district programs means less funding for the school, which means cutting staff, which means fewer courses are offered, which means students seeking other options need to look outside the district to find them.

“They’re driving us to a…K-10 school,” said Becky Dunn, the district’s business manager.

“The Running Start situation gets a bit murky,” Mishra offered, “especially with tuition going up in the state.”

He pointed out that, given the rising cost of postsecondary education, students and families could hardly be blamed for taking advantage of free college credits.

Discussion during the meeting focused on how to better retain the half-time students who wished to participate in the program as well as full-time students striving for more choice.

“I think LMS is great,” House was quick to emphasize. “I just think [expanded elective offerings] would be one more way of keeping our kids here.”

Middle school math and science teacher Maddie Martin agreed there was a need for flexibility, sharing the example of several students in a previous eighth-grade class whom she let work ahead of their classmates. As freshmen, they took math with the sophomores. Now, as incoming juniors, the high school’s course schedule doesn’t allow them to take advanced math, the most difficult mathematics course WHS offers.

“These were math kids,” said Martin. “It’s painful to me that we can’t [accommodate them] in our district. I just think we need to make some scheduling changes. All the teachers agree on that,” she added.

“Choice is good,” Mishra said. “We just have to figure out what the choice is.”

Those who believe in the importance of teaching life skills in high school will be relieved to know that the de-requirement of LMS is at least two years away.

“At this point, for this year, I don’t see how the district could make the change,” said high-school principal Stephanie Wooderchak.

“All I’m asking is that we don’t mandate those 1.5 [credits]”, House replied.

But removing a credit’s mandatory status isn’t as simple as deleting a few words from the course list. Even if other class choices for juniors were offered in the same period – at this point, none are – students are bound by the graduation requirements listed in the student handbook at the time they entered WHS.

This year’s juniors and sophomores will still need to take the course to graduate, and the earliest class for which LMS could be optional would be the incoming freshmen, the class of 2023 – if the board chooses to change the requirements at its next meeting, which is the last before the new school year starts.

That’s just as well, according to Wooderchak, “It’s not something you want to rush through,” she said. “It’s curriculum.”

House agreed, saying that the two-year span “would give us enough time – those freshmen and sophomore [years] – to figure out what to do.”

Which brings up another question – who’s doing the deciding?

“I’m not in favor of this notion of top-down management,” said Russ Knopp, a board member and former teacher at Preston Hall Middle School. “I don’t like us telling the staff [what classes to offer].”

“We’re not telling them what they have to teach,” House countered. “We’re just giving them more flexibility.”

And then there’s the issue of the coming year’s 11th graders, the class that brought the issue to House’s attention in the first place.

“There’s a whole group of juniors who don’t know how they’re going to get LMS in,” House said.

“Running Start is a choice,” Wooderchak said. “LMS is a requirement. That’s the way it is right now. That’s life.”

If any changes are going to be made this year to the credit requirements for incoming freshmen, they’ll have to be made at Thursday’s meeting.

And should the board vote to make LMS an elective, the hard work will still need to be done. Assembling schedules and curricula is difficult under ideal enrollment and staffing conditions; in Waitsburg’s case, extra creativity and collaboration will be required for a successful outcome.

Even if the board votes no on this measure, the mid-July meeting made it clear that the underlying issues will still need to be addressed – and that administrators, staff and board members are determined to do so.

“We’ve talked about it for years,” House said of the high-school enrollment problem, “but we’ve never done anything.”

Thursday’s meeting is at 7 p.m. in Preston Hall and is open to the public. Also on the agenda will be a presentation about the possibility of hiring a school resource officer and the installation of the board’s newest member, Lisa Morrow.