Published: July 10, 2008 02:29 am            

EDUCATION: Starpoint may expand its community service program

PENDLETON — Juniors at Starpoint High School could be required to perform community service in order to graduate, if the school board approves a measure to expand the community service requirement.

Currently high school seniors have to perform 15 hours of community service as a requirement of the school’s participation in government class. Students need to pass the class in order to graduate, although the state education department says it is up to the district to decide if community service is a part of the class. If approved at the next board meeting on Monday, the program would be expanded to include all high school students. They would have to meet a required amount of hours in community service each year.

“It’s an extension of the current program,” Superintendent C. Douglas Whelan said. “It’s increasing it to a total over four years.”

The requirement wouldn’t be implemented right away: Only juniors and seniors would be required to fulfill the community service quota for the upcoming school year. Nothing really changes for seniors, who would still have to perform 15 hours of community service, except it would no longer have anything to do with the participation in government class. Juniors would be required to perform 12 hours of community service, but high school assistant principal Roberta Wyner said they would not be required to spend the hours at an outside organization.

“We will provide school-based projects,” Wyner said. “They don’t have to go out.”

She added that the hours for juniors can be through either school-based projects or a community organization. The list of community agencies students can volunteer at will also be expanded.

Some of the school projects include working with the Martin Luther King Multicultural Center in Buffalo. The school projects would also be based on what students are studying in some of their classes. For example, some of the creative writing students will be reading books to the Martin Luther King students, while some photography students will take their pictures for Valentine’s Day.

“It’ll relate to what they are learning,” Wyner said. “Before, it did not relate to their classes.”

Seniors must have at least 10 hours of community-based service, and five in school-based projects. Before students can graduate, they must complete a total of 40 hours, including eight hours as sophomores and five hours as freshmen. Both sophomores and freshmen can fill their hours through school-based projects.

Wyner said the goal of the new program is for it to be a requirement for all high school students. The district may include younger students at the elementary and middle school levels with the community service, but not as a requirement. The reason Starpoint wants to get more students involved with community service is that it teaches them things about their community and giving back to it, Wyner said.

The school board discussed expanding the current community service program at a previous meeting on June 23, after a committee of teachers, parents, students, staff and administrators developed the new program.

Contact reporter Joe Olenick at 439-9222, ext. 6241.

        

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