ELKINS — The Randolph County Board of Education has approved a high school graduation requirement update.

Superintendent Dr. Shawn Dilly and the school system’s Secondary Curriculum Team had requested the change, which the BOE approved, in a 5-0 vote.

Susan McCauley, the school system’s Coordinator of Technology, Secondary Curriculum and TIS (Technology Integration Specialist) explained to the BOE why the change was needed.

“We are asking to change the graduation requirements for Randolph County Schools,” McCauley said. “Currently, the requirement is 26 credits and those are broken down. The required credits are four for Math, four required for English, four for Social Studies, three for Science, one Physical Education, one Health, one Fine Arts, one Technology, one credit for advisory that is earned over the course of four years, so they earn a quarter credit per year to total one full credit at the end of their four years.”

McCauley told the Board that students also had to have four personalized credits in order to graduate.

“Personalized credits, we familiarly know those as electives, but the state calls them personalized credits,” McCauley said. “So there is a requirement of six personalized credits. And the personal finance credit is going to become a requirement for the graduating class of 2028. It’s already being offered now and the students can take that at any point throughout their high school career. We have some students that are taking that now and it is a legislature requirement.”

McCauley said the state requires students to have a minimum of 23 credits to graduate.

“We meet all of those requirements plus extra,” McCauley said. “So we meet and exceed the state minimum requirements.”

McCauley said she researched nearby counties, and noted Randolph County was kind of on the “top end” with 26 credits.

“A lot of counties go with the state minimum and others have higher than the state minimum,” McCauley said. “But 26 is one of the higher ones that I uncovered, but I didn’t check all 55 counties. I just wanted to see where we were geographically with counties that were nearby, and then counties that were a similar size.”

McCauley said the change was being requested because the school system has gone from block scheduling to period scheduling.

“When we moved from block scheduling to period scheduling, this reduced the amount of credits that students could earn throughout their four years,” McCauley said.

“Block scheduling students could take eight classes per year for four years. So they could earn 32 credits, plus that extra advisory credit that they could earn on quarter credit per year. That put them at 33 credits, and the requirement for graduation was 26.

“When we moved to the period schedule, the students are only getting seven classes per day for four years. That’s 28 credits and then the additional credit for advisory. So they can earn a maximum of 29 credits right now. And if we keep our requirement at 26, that doesn’t leave a lot of wiggle room for students who may have trouble starting out in high school and fail a class and have to repeat it without a summer school, credit recovery, or something like that.”

Dilly said during the move from block to period scheduling included discussion about an eight-period day.

“If you’ll recall, we did talk initially about the eight-period day, which would allow us to say 32 credits,” Dilly said. “But it was determined by our leadership team at the secondary level that they felt that the intervention period was important enough, especially because of our overall performance, to do this. So as a result it shifted us to seven-period days, which in turn has led us to make this recommendation.”

McCauley told the BOE that the request originated in the schools with the secondary curriculum team before it was brought to the district’s leadership team, where a plan was put in place.

“So our proposal is to move to 25 credits. This will still meet and exceed the state minimum requirement,” McCauley said. “We are going to keep the core subjects the same… We know that the state is adding a computer science credit and it will go in effect for the students who are in seventh grade this year.”

The changes won’t affect this year’s graduating class, officials said. It will go into effect for students graduating in 2027 and beyond.