The Board of Education is considering a change to our past practice of how community college credit is applied. Previously, while AUSD’s policies and Administrative Regulations did not specifically or explicitly prohibit credits earned at community colleges to be applied to core graduation requirements, the longstanding practice was to allow students to only apply those credits earned at community colleges to the elective credit requirements associated with AUSD high school graduation requirements.
The proposed change would allow, with some limits, the application of community college credits earned in relevant subject areas to some core high school graduation requirements.
One driver for this change is to allow for students and families to have additional flexibility in selecting their schedules in ways that progressively concentrate around their own interests. For example, a student inclined toward science could, through concurrent and summer community college classes, finish a four year high school English requirement early and take additional science classes in their high school schedule.
The basic caps for concurrent college coursework will remain in place; specifically, comprehensive high school students will be allowed to take up to 14 community college classes during their high school term (2 per semester from spring semester of freshman year through senior year).
The general rule that only classes NOT offered at AUSD schools would remain in effect. The clarification here is that current policy does not prohibit the application of credits earned at the community college to be counted toward select core class requirements for high school graduation.
General Rule #1: AUSD students are only permitted to take community college classes that are not offered at their AUSD school.
General Rule #2: AUSD students in Comprehensive High Schools (EHS and AHS) can take up to two community college courses per semester beginning with the second semester of their 9th grade year.
General Rule #3: Community college classes taken during high school will generally count towards the elective requirements associated with high school graduation; the exceptions, those classes that can be applied to core graduation requirements other than electives are articulated in the attached revision of Administrative Regulation 6172.1 (Additional details are in the document "Proposed Modification to AUSD AR 6172.1 " attached to this agenda item).
- BP6172.1 Concurrent Enrollment in College Classes
On October 8th, AUSD held a Board Policy Subcommittee meeting to discuss the topic of Concurrent Enrollment and the idea of alignment of practices across the District. We heard from many teachers, parents, and students who weighed in to express how aligning practices across the District would impact them.
Tonight, the Board and staff are bringing this topic to the full Board and community so the further discussion can take place before taking action to direct staff to align practice across both comprehensive high schools.