Two pupils to meet obligation by taking ballet and dance instruction.
By: Jill Matthews
MONTGOMERY In a rare occurrence, two Montgomery High School students will be allowed to fulfill their physical education requirements during the 2004-2005 school year by participating in outside organizations.
Two unidentified students will fulfill their requirement by participating in instruction through the American Ballet Theatre and the Princeton Dance and Theatre Studio.
The Board of Education approved the "alternate curricular experience" last week.
Superintendent Stuart Schnur told the board that the programs the two students were participating in were "unbelievably rigorous," supervised activities. Such requests are not granted for just participating in sports but only for programs that require "extremely advanced levels of bodily movement," he said.
The students will be monitored, assessed and certified through a site visitation by district staff, and detailed logs must be keep of the students’ activities, said Dr. Schnur.
"There is room in our existing graduation requirements that permits parents and students to petition for this sort of thing," explained High School Principal James Misek in a telephone interview. He said when parents and students present a sufficient argument for granting the request, then the administration would be reasonable and grant an approval. But, he said, it is not something that is granted often or across the board.
Mr. Misek said he could not give details of the request but said the parents presented the case to the administration and the administration scrutinized its policy to figure out if the request could be accommodated.
In fact, Mr. Misek said this was the first time he has granted such an approval and did not know of many situations where this was used in the past, although he did say some school districts already allow such curricular substitutions.
Granting these requests is also difficult because of the scheduling conflicts they create.
"At first glance, it sounds like it just involves physical education, but physical education is tied to lab science," said Mr. Misek.
Currently, a committee is reviewing new graduation requirements adopted by the Board of Education a few months ago that would give school districts the ability to entertain such allowances on a more "global approach," he said.
Under the new graduation requirement options, if adopted by the board, students may be able to substitute standard classwork with independent study, co-curricular or extra-curricular activities, school-to-work experiences, student exchange programs, distance learning opportunities, taking courses elsewhere for credit and community service.
The committee is tentatively scheduled to present its findings to the board in November.
In other business, the board had its first reading of an updated policy for student residency requirements last week that would require students to live in the district for the first 90 calendar days of their senior year in order to graduate from Montgomery High School.
The current residency requirement maintains that seniors only need to live in the district for the first day of classes in order to graduate from Montgomery. Dr. Schnur said that some people were abusing this policy by moving out of the district during the summer and renting a house in the township for the first week of school so their children could graduate from Montgomery.
The policy for children in grades K through 11 that they be residents of the district until Feb. 1 in order to remain enrolled in the school system for the rest of the year will remain the same.