Recently, the Olathe School District changed the graduation requirements for the incoming freshmen. Starting in the fall of the 2024-25 school year, freshmen will have different requirements for classes they must take to graduate.

Senior counselor Madeline Frankel shared that the requirements have been changed as a way for the district to stay up to date.

“I think that they just update graduation requirements based on making sure that the state produces well-rounded students and they get a well-rounded education,” Frankel said.

Though the changes to the requirements have been shared with the public, it isn’t yet specified what all of these changes fully mean for the students.

Frankel shared that though these changes have gone through, counselors have yet to receive further guidance on how to implement these changes and what all of them necessarily mean for students.

In the past, the requirements for English has been 4 units (years) of an English Language Arts class. The new requirement states that students must take 3.5 units, as well as .5 units of Communications.

The current requirement for Social Studies and Fine Arts is 3 units of History and Government as well as 1 unit of Fine Arts; these requirements will stay the same.

Currently, you are required to take 3 units each of Science and Math. This will remain the same, with the addition of 1 unit of a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) class.

Current requirements for Physical Education state that you must complete 1 unit of Physical Education. The new requirements hope to involve Health and Physical Education by requiring .5 credits each of Physical Education, Health and Financial Literacy. 

With the addition of these classes, the requirements of units for electives or individual plans are being reduced from 6 to 4.5 units.

The district is also adding 2 new requirements, first, they must complete 2 postsecondary audits from either the academic asset or the career and real-world asset.

This new requirement has been implemented to help students gain more than just a diploma when graduation comes around. When students go on as adults and begin their careers these audits will have given them additional training to help in the real world.

“They’re requiring more training or more education for many jobs now so I believe that the point of this is to just strengthen the high school transcript for students coming out of Kansas,” Frankel said.

The second requirement is the completion of FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid). FAFSA is a form that helps students in applying for federal student aid like federal grants, work-study funds, and loans.

The FAFSA form has been updated in the past year making it a quick 15-minute process in filling out the form. 

An important tip about the application is that you don’t have to accept the loans. A student can fill out the form and then not accept any of the loans given.

“By having it done, it just takes away that barrier of can I afford college if I want to go,” Frankel said.