By Bailey Kohnen, a San Diego Documenters editor
The San Diego Unified School District is weighing a policy change that would waive local graduation requirements for some students, such as those with disabilities or in foster homes.
The policy, BP 6146.1, would allow students who could not reasonably be expected to complete the district’s A-G requirements to receive a diploma. The change would not apply to the state’s graduation requirements.
Several members of the deaf and hard of hearing community, often referred to as DHH, attended the meeting to voice support for the policy during public comment at an SDUSD meeting late last month, along with teachers, principals and others who work with DHH students.
The policy is particularly salient to DHH students, who are often unable to graduate because required classes are not available in American Sign Language, according to Terrence Jones, a deaf person who received a certificate rather than a diploma because his classes were not considered equivalent to those taken by hearing students.
Cory Hoffman, the central office resource teacher for SDUSD’s Deaf and Hard of Hearing Program, explained that the district’s A-G requirements force DHH students to take classes not designed for them.
“If they want a diploma, they must be in mainstream classes, learning instruction filtered through an ASL interpreter or transcriber, instead of being in separate classes for the deaf with an instructor who can directly communicate with them,” Hoffman said.
The board appeared receptive to BP 6146.1 but did not vote on the matter. Members asked staff to return in late March with a new and better-defined proposal that includes an actionable item.
This brief came from reporting by Michael Zamora De La Cruz, a San Diego Documenter, at a San Diego Board of Education meeting late last month. The Documenters program trains and pays community members to document what happens at public meetings. It’s run by inewsource, a nonpartisan nonprofit newsroom dedicated to investigative and accountability journalism. Read more about the program here.
Type of Content
Brief: An account of a public government proceeding, written and edited by the San Diego Documenters.
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