Education Choice Diploma approved for Knik, Twindly Bridge charter schools

After approving the ‘Educational Choice Diploma’ at Mat-Su Central School (MSCS) a few months ago, the Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District (MSBSD) approved the same option for Twindly Bridge Charter and Knik Charter Schools during the September 17 school board meeting.

“This would allow Twindly Bridge Charter students and Knik Charter Correspondence students to opt into the educational choice diploma if they wanted to,” said MSBSD Superintendent Dr. Randy Trani during the meeting.

Under the Educational Choice Diploma, students may earn an Educational Choice Diploma by completing at least 25.5 credits in the following required and elective subjects: Language Arts – 4.0 credits, Social Studies – 3.5 credits, including .5 units in Alaska History, Mathematics – 4.0 credits, Science – 3.0 credits, PE/Health – 1.5 credits, and General Electives* – 9.5 credits, which may include Career & Technical Education (CTE), JROTC, Fine Arts, World Language, or additional core courses.

It maintains both the total credit requirement of 25.5 and the standard core credit totals required for graduation.

“It maintains the core requirements like everybody else in all of the other brick-and-mortar schools and other charter schools, but it removes that specificity and has nine and a half credits of electives, which could really be anything,” Dr. Trani explained during the April 23 school board meeting.

At the time, the policy was specific to MSCS, though Dr. Trani said he could imagine other correspondence schools, such as Twindly Bridge or Knik Charter adopting the same option, which he said could easily added. School board member Tom Bergey said the option could be further expanded to schools outside the core area. “I see this as a valuable tool and I think it would have value expanding it out to the periphery where we have low staffing numbers.”

The ‘Educational Choice Diploma’ is a restructure of the current high school graduation requirements within the MSBSD, which currently requires graduates to complete 26.5 credits, well above the state requirement of 21 credits, making it the highest credit requirement in the state.

In April, school board member Ted Swanson said that his children attend Twindly Bridge Charter School and believes it would behoove the district to add Twindly Bridge to the Educational Choice Diploma so the students and school could get the funding as well.

The program is set to begin with the graduating class of 2026.