Saugus schools add new language, art graduation requirements

SAUGUS-The School Committee voted to raise the bar at Saugus High School Thursday when it approved a request to make two years of foreign language and a half year of fine arts a graduation requirement.Superintendent Richard Langlois and High School Principal Joseph Diorio told the committee that the high school wasn’t getting it done in regards to basic college admittance requirements.”We consider ourselves a college prep high school,” Diorio said.However, most colleges now require incoming students to have two years of a world language under their belt. Diorio said roughly 70 percent of his students do take two years of foreign language but to push the bar even higher he wants it to be a requirement for all students.Langlois said the high school doesn’t even meet that state standard of 990 hours of time and learning for students because the school lacks electives. Diorio said with the additional requirement of a half year of fine arts he hopes to change that.Currently, students are required to take five credits of “unified arts” in order to graduate. Diorio said unified arts is a smörgåsbord of classes that he would like to do away with.In its place, students could take basic art, digital imaging or video production, chorus, band or drama. He said he also wants to add three new electives that would also fall under fine arts, technical theater, women in film and history of rock ?n roll. He said he is also planning to add a video production II class for students that want to further explore the Comcast studio that is located at the high school.Students would be required to pick up the fine arts requirement starting with the Class of 2010 but the the language requirement won’t kick in until 2011. That way Diorio said it would give students three years to pick up two years of language.School Committee Wendy Reed said having taken three years of French and three years of Latin herself she loved the languages, but she wondered if Diorio’s staff could support it.Diorio said he has a request for one additional world language teacher in his budget for 2010.”It would be a tight squeeze to fit it in now,” he said adding that he has four Spanish teachers and one Italian teacher.Committee member Rick Doucette said the committee, along with Diorio, have had conversations about moving toward offering students what he called a 21st century education.”We talked about adding Mandarin,” he said. “To hear the excitement at the high school when we talked about a 21st century education with video production and Mandarin.”Langlois said it’s been oft quoted that to be competitive, students need to be competent in two areas – language and technology.”He’s taking a giant step here,” Langlois said regarding Diorio’s request. “He already took one with technology and this will be the language piece.”The committee approved the request 4-0 with committee member Christine Wilson absent.