Classroom participation won’t earn your diploma

Gov. Blagojevich may add community service requirement

Article by:

Jamie South – Staff Reporter

• [email protected]

Earlier this month, Gov. Rod Blagojevich unveiled a plan to add 50 hours of community service to the Illinois Merit Recognition Scholarship requirements, and possibly to the graduation requirements of all Illinois high school students.

“There is more than the academics,” said Larry Stinson, principal of DeKalb High School.

The requirement, however, will not decrease the number of students who receive their diplomas.

“The students would know the requirements before they got to that point,” Stinson said. “Do we hold back any student who does not meet their mathematics requirements? Yes, because they knew what was required of them beforehand. This is just a part of giving back to the community.”

Some local teachers like the idea, but question how the program would be implemented.

“This would be a great thing for high school students, but schools may not have the money, staff or resources to be able to go about this,” said Janet Anderson, DeKalb High School mathematics teacher. “It would do good to build good citizens, but when community service becomes a requirement, it takes away from the service itself.”

Anderson questioned whether volunteering to do manual labor would be worth twice as much credit as volunteering in a nursing home because it is harder work.

Illinois would be the second state in the nation to require community service in order to graduate. Currently, Maryland requires students to complete 40 hours in order to graduate.

“We’ll study how the program has worked in other places,” Blagojevich said. “We’ll work with local school districts, teachers and volunteer organizations. We’ll talk to parents. We’ll talk to students. We’ll do all of the research. But I must admit, the idea is compelling.”