REPORTS TO THE BOARD

Teaching and Learning Report

To: Michael Green

From: Asha Riley

Date: May 19, 2022

Re: Teaching and Learning

Emergency Waiver Program for the Class of 2022

The emergency waiver program is intended to help prevent students from being unduly impacted by unforeseen disruptions to coursework and assessments resulting from an emergency or disaster, like the pandemic. The waiver program will:

• Give districts the authority to waive certain credit and graduation pathway option requirements for individual students who were unable to complete graduation requirements despite a good faith effort on the part of the district to help the student meet the requirements.

The waiver allows LEAs (school districts, charter schools, and tribal compact schools) and private schools to waive certain credit and graduation pathway option requirements for graduating students on a case-by-case basis.

• The waiver does not apply to local graduation requirements. Districts have the authority to waive their local requirements. Last year, when we adopted resolution 2419, we replaced the procedure in policy 2418. This ensures any requests received any time prior to graduation will be considered.
• Students awarded the waiver must have demonstrated preparation for their post-secondary plan according to their High School and Beyond Plan.

It used to be that the state facilitated the waiver process, tracked the formal requests, and approved or denied them. This new waiver option now delegates both authority and responsibility for the process to the local school district.

In preparation, we have established a process and a record-keeping tool that complies with the state requirements. This includes: 

• An analysis of every senior students’ status
• Communication plan for any and all students who qualify, provided in their home language
• The creation of a panel with at least one counselor, educators with expertise in trauma-informed instruction and culturally responsive education, and if appropriate, special education, and instruction for multilingual/English Language learners, to review and make recommendations to the district concerning any decision to decline a waiver
• Making and noting “ good faith efforts” of the district
• Ensures we follow the limitations of the waiver
• Ensures equitable administration of the emergency waiver. The district shall disaggregate waiver data by student subgroups for analysis to ensure no particular group was disproportionately impacted.

Counselors have been working closely with the seniors in the Class of 2022 to ensure they are on track to meet graduation requirements on time. I reviewed the status of each student and where they might be deficient (whether they have yet to pass the state test, or still need .5 credit of math, or maybe have an incomplete health credit). The projected waiver requests are outlined below.  I included data from the Class of 2021 to give a comparison.

• In order to graduate on time, we see a large number of seniors will need to access the waiver in order to meet one or more of the graduation requirements.
• Most of the students requesting the waiver are doing so in order to meet the “graduation pathway requirement” (the state test requirement). This is due to the fact these students had far fewer opportunities to meet the requirement due to Covid. The SBA test was not available to them last year or the year prior. They also would typically be able to take the ASVAB test to meet the requirement, however, this test has also been unavailable. Most are dependent on passing the SBA this year. 
• We are currently administering the state SBA test and will not know the results for another few weeks. As results from the test come in, we may see more seniors pass the test and meet the requirement.  The number of students who access the waiver for the purposes of meeting the pathway requirement would then decrease.
• This year there is a significant decrease in the number of requests to waive credits. I believe efforts to address the impacts of Covid and support credit recovery at both WHS and TEAM have benefitted students greatly.

To better understand the requests to waive credits, I have created the following table comparing the Class of 2021 requests with the Class of 2022 requests.

* Of the 23 students who will need a waiver, some only need partial credits waived, some only need elective credits waived, and some only need core credits waived. In other cases, some students need multiple credits waived in both the core and electives. Therefore the numbers in the next two columns could include students multiple times (i.e. they are reflected in the need to waive core credit and elective credit). 

• It is important to note that this year only 23 students have requested some form of credit waiver and a majority needed less than 2 credits waived. 
• Only 5% of the Class of 2022 need 2 or more credits waived in order to graduate on time. Last year, 12% of the senior class needed 2 more credits waived in order to graduate on time. This is a significant reduction.
•  Again, this data reflects projected needs, and as those 9 students in the Class of 2022 continue to finish their coursework, we believe more students will achieve the credits, and will not actually need to request 2 or more credits be waived.