GREEN BAY (NBC 26) — Green Bay Area Public Schools is planning a tiered approach to return to pre-pandemic graduation requirements within the next few years.
Board of Education policy has set the district's graduation requirement at 22 credits. When the COVID-19 pandemic changed the educational landscape, moving students out of physical classrooms into a virtual environment, the board and district reevaluated that policy.
Judy Wiegand, executive director of secondary schools at GBAPS, said faculty saw students continue to struggle. That's when the administration recommended the Board of Education lower the graduation requirement to 15 credits, the state minimum, for the 2020-21 school year.
As students prepare to return to in-person learning this fall, the administration revisited this change and made a new recommendation following a tiered approach.
For the 2021-22 school year, students will need 17.5 credits to graduate. That includes two elective credits and personal financial literacy. The requirement increases to 20 credits for the 2022-23 school year, which includes 4.5 elective credits and personal financial literacy. Starting in the fall of 2023, the graduation requirement will return to the pre-pandemic level of 22 credits.
"I know that a number of our students will be able to meet the requirements as they were before, but we also have a number of students who may not be able to," Wiegand said. "So instead of putting them in a place of, 'do I have to go get a GED?' Why not take a look at can we take a tiered approach where they still meet the minimum requirements by the state of Wisconsin, but still moving back toward where we were pre-pandemic."
The Board of Education unanimously voted to approve administration's new proposal at its meeting on Aug. 9.
