ELLIJAY, Ga. – Gilmer’s BOE is looking into its graduation this month through two changes, one with the date of this years graduation and one with the requirements for graduation moving forward.

In the current school calendar, FY 2021-2022, Gilmer’s Board of Education (BOE) is moving their graduation day back one day. Superintendent Dr. Ridley said in the meeting, “We have a need to amend the FY22, the current calendar, to reflect GHS Graduation being held on Saturday, May 28, instead of Friday, May 27.”

The calendar change was approved with 4 members voting for and board member Joe Pflueger abstaining from the vote.

However, the current date is not the only change coming to Gilmer Graduations. Dr. Ridley spoke in the board’s work session saying that they were originally going to have former GHS Principal Carla Foley give a presentation for changes to the graduation requirement to the board to vote on until they realized this was not necessary. Dr. Ridley did still provide the information for the board, though.

Dr. Ridley explained that they would not need to change the policy, but rather just change the requirements in the handbook. This is why a board vote was not required. These changes were stated in the meeting that they would take effect on the Freshman of 2022-2023, so those who have already operated under the current requirements will not be forced to change midway through their high school years.

Ridley stated, “What we did is we added a fourth social studies and reconfigured the required electives to add an additional class and required that they pass a college and career academy pathway during their time in high school.”

He went on to explain that this would still allow kids in extracurriculars like band or sports to take multiple similar classes like weight lifting or the same extracurricular class every semester like band class.

These changes coming into the 2022-2023 Freshmen class will be reflected in the handbook before next semester, but again Ridley confirmed that current students will still be held to current requirements.

With the changes, the minimum total units required increases from 24 to 26, leaving six other courses available out of the 32 total. As board member Joe Pflueger questioned what the school could do if a student transferred in from a different system their Senior Year and may have had different requirements, Ridley responded that the apex system could allow time for that student to catch up within the year should a need be made.