After more than a month of hearing people’s concerns, the Governing Board of the Benicia Unified School District voted for Benicia High School to revert back to its previous graduation requirements at Thursday’s meeting.

On Jan. 14, the board held a study session to discuss proposed new graduation requirements for Benicia High and went into further detail at its regular March 16 meeting. The proposed requirements— which would go into effect starting with the class of 2022— aimed to increase college readiness for all students and were modeled after the UC system’s A-G requirements. These conditions included requiring an extra year of science, an extra year of math, two years of the same world language, one year of a visual or performing art and one year of a new ninth-grade course titled “Get Focused.” The requirements were unanimously approved as part of the consent calendar at the board’s April 6 meeting.

However, as faculty and the community learned about the requirements, they expressed their concerns. Among the issues raised were the lack of staff and community input, and potentially decreased space for art and electives. After the board received a multitude of emails each day and especially after the June 1 meeting where members of the BUSD community turned up in large numbers to express their concerns during the public comment portion, Superintendent Charles Young decided to bring the requirements back to the board for a re-evaluation much sooner than anticipated.

“While I believe this is still the right conversation to have about our graduation requirements and what we want to do for kids and how we want to create an educational pathway for them that provides them as many opportunities available when they leave us, my thought is that we could have acknowledged this and we could have done a better job of outreach to the public,” Young said.

Young said he wanted to continue the discussion on graduation requirements and what the district and community would like them to be. Until then, Young offered the board a chance to re-approve the previous graduation requirements, with one modification. The semesterlong healthy living class for ninth-graders would be replaced by a semester of “Get Focused,” a course aimed at helping freshmen learn skills that would prepare them for colleges and careers. It was previously proposed as a yearlong course but will now be offered for a semester with students still having the ability to take another semesterlong course during their freshmen years. The contents of healthy living will be offered at the middle school level, and other parts will be integrated into the “Get Focused” curriculum.

The board voted 3-to-1 to restore the previous graduation requirements. Trustee Stacy Holguin was absent, and the lone dissenting vote came from Trustee Diane Ferrucci who was disappointed that the board would vote on the matter before having a robust community discussion to talk about improved community outreach and share what the board’s motive was. She also expressed, as a former educator, that she felt the previous graduation requirements held students to lower expectations.

“One of the things I had been finding very disheartening when I had the opportunity and privilege to return to Benicia is going on the state website and learning that we have the minimum standards for graduation for high school,” she said. “We are a community that I believe has much higher expectations for our students and has much higher expectations for their children, and it shocked me to know as an educator that we are at the very basic minimum level.”

“I have a firm belief that our kids can live up to these higher expectations, and I think it’s an insult to not have this discussion and revert back to previous standards,” she added.

Ferrucci also believed it was not appropriate to vote without Holguin present.

“This was an engagement that took a lot of us a long time to come to, and I don’t believe that four of us should change it tonight,” she said.

Ferrucci also recommended looking into alternative pathways for career-oriented students.

Trustee Peter Morgan said he was unable to attend the workshop in January and reiterated his statement from the last meeting that he would vote differently on the requirements with what he has learned.

“Knowing the input that I got, I would not have supported these changes,” he said. “I would not support them in the future.”

Morgan said a big part of why he did not support the requirements was because he was a strong believer in parents and students making their own decisions.

“Nothing I’ve heard (regarding the previous requirements) impedes in any way the ability for students to achieve UC standards,” he said. “That’s their choice and their parents’ choice.”

Morgan also said he was unclear why the district settled on UC standards instead of any other college standards, including private schools.

“If I were a parent, I’d be wanting my child to meet those standards, but I don’t think it’s appropriate for me nor the district to make those choices for what’s best,” he said.

Trustee Celeste Monnette agreed with Ferrucci’s statement that additional discussion was important, but she felt the board did not do enough of that to begin with.

“I feel like a lot of things that have come up as concerns we didn’t talk about enough,” she said.

Monnette said she was willing to support Young’s resolution so the district could further engage the public and meet their needs. She also said that while she felt the intention of the requirements were good, she was concerned about the unintended consequences.

“I think this is such a significant issue that it really deserves our thorough attention,” she said. “I’m committed to doing that with you and trying to look at all these potential fallouts and unintended consequences and how we can be successful. If we implement a program where we’re not successful because we don’t have the resources to support it, then none of us win.”

In other matters, the board extended Young’s contract through 2020, heard a discussion on Next Generation Science Standards as well as a quarterly update on Measure S.

The next meeting will be held on Thursday, Aug. 17.