With two years to decide whether high school students will have to complete a major project to graduate, school boards are taking their time to assess the value of the requirement.

In the next two academic years, high school students will have to continue developing a senior project to graduate.

However, starting with the 2016-17 school year, the state Department of Education will allow districts to drop the requirement.

District officials contacted by the Eagle see value in the projects and would continue them in some form. Some are more certain than others.

Allegheny-Clarion Valley

“At A-C Valley, we are going to keep our graduation project in place just because it’s a positive impact on the local community,” said Superintendent David McDeavitt of the Allegheny-Clarion Valley School District.

He said students start thinking about their project in their sophomore year and fine-tune the idea — with the help of a graduation project supervisor — in their junior and senior years.

Their topic must have a community service component and a career exploration component, he said.

Students do research and a certain number of service hours in the community. They also prepare a presentation for a committee that evaluates each student’s work.

Karns City

The Karns City School Board has not decided exactly what to do after 2016, but “currently, the thinking is to continue a culminating project,” said Superintendent Eric Ritzert.

“(Students) have to do something that they can show and demonstrate skills of analyzing, synthesizing, evaluating knowledge and understanding the project that they want (to) complete,” Ritzert said.

Ritzert said project selection cannot be overstated.

“The challenge with the educators is to work with the students to ensure that what they’re choosing to do is truly, personally meaningful for them and could be meaningful to them to succeed in the future.

“If that can be accomplished, it’s definitely a meaningful project because it can help them with research skills, develop a worldwide understanding of a topic, and it gives them a broad avenue to explore that’s not being forced by the system,” Ritzert said.

Butler

In the Butler School District, the board has not yet discussed the future of the projects, said Superintendent Michael Strutt.

Although he realizes that much of the decision will rest with a new superintendent, he favors the district maintaining the student projects.

“We took a completely different approach to the projects when the requirement came out several years ago. Rather than just focus projects in the senior year, we felt that it would be beneficial for students to begin doing projects in 9th grade and carry it all the way through to the senior year,” Strutt said.

“We took our four major subject areas: math, science, social studies and English, and we decided that we would place a project in one of the four subject areas each year in high school,” he said.

“Personally, I feel that project learning is valuable. I feel our students benefit greatly by having a project in one of the major subjects each of their four years in high school, and it would not be my recommendation to change that,” Strutt said.

Seneca Valley

The Seneca Valley School District plans to keep its senior project requirements.

Assistant Superintendent Matt McKinley said at a recent school board meeting that he’s seen all the good senior projects do, both for students and the community at large.

“Through the years I’ve seen such magnificent projects completed by students,” he said. “I’ve seen rescue dogs trained and so many charitable efforts by students.”

In addition, McKinley said, many students pick a project that correlates with a career they’re interested in pursuing. That puts students in contact with that profession, and sometimes students realize it’s not what they expected.

“They can learn that lesson before they or their parents spend any money on college,” McKinley said. “What a valuable lesson to learn in high school.”

Senior projects also “get students out of their comfort zone, out and interacting with the community” during the several months it takes to complete them, he said.

South Butler

In the South Butler School District, it appears likely that the projects will continue in some form.

“There hasn’t been any hard decisions on what that will look like going forward,” said Jason Davidek, district spokesman.

“I think we still believe in the value of that career exploration component, so it may stay in some form as a part of the curriculum, but just not as a stringent requirement like it is right now.

“It can still be intertwined there in the curriculum in some capacity, but we still have a little bit of time to figure out what exactly that picture will look like after 2016.”

South Butler’s version of the senior project starts in the ninth grade when students do initial exploring of topics, called “career cruising.”

By the 10th grade, the project “morphs into a college research year that’s more based on what they found through their career cruising. And it basically culminates with a senior project that focuses on career exploration,” Davidek said.

Slippery Rock

In the Slippery Rock School District, high school students are not assigned a specific project, but work on a series of writing and speaking projects from ninth through 12th grades.

Principal Kristie Shulsky said the assignments, which are embedded in the curriculum, meet the requirement for a senior project and that they become more challenging for the students as they progress.

Shulsky said she favored continuing with the projects.

Moniteau

“It is something that we’ll have to look at as a district administratively and talk to the board about it,” said Superintendent George Svolos of Moniteau School District. “It has a lot of value. However, we will evaluate and see if it is something that we still feel is beneficial to our kids.”

Moniteau students have explored careers and a variety of other interests in their projects, such as cinematography, dentistry, graphic design, nursing, broadcasting, woodworking, mission trips and dog breeding. One student rebuilt and restored a 1964 Mustang. Another held fundraisers for Toys for Tots.

Svolos noted that it can help students rethink their career ideas.

“They grow skills helpful to them,” said Svolos.

Svolos said students learn to be organized, meet deadlines, take responsibility and present their experience to others. He said it prepares them for job interviews or to meet with college recruiters.

“It’s a component of learning, a component of demonstrating skills,” said Svolos. “It makes you very proud to see the kids achieve.”

Union

At Union High School, the intent is to keep aspects of programs in place, but not necessarily keep the exact model they have to use now to meet all of the requirements, said Michael Moore, principal. Their projects are career focused over several years.

Moore said the career-based projects have been very beneficial for students. It gets them thinking about their futures and the steps they need to take to get there.

However, a 10-minute presentation students are required to do in front of a faculty panel takes up an entire Act 80 day for teachers, a day they’re supposed to be doing classroom planning.

He said they’ll likely do away with the panel presentation, but keep job shadowing, a written paper and classroom presentation as a districtwide graduation requirement.

“(The value of career exploration), that’s not really ever going to change no matter what Pennsylvania decides what our graduation requirement is. That’s still going to be valuable knowledge,” Moore said.

Freeport

At Freeport, the school projects will likely continue in some form, said Todd O’Shell, district spokesman. Calls were not returned to clarify what kinds of projects students currently focus on.

Mars

The Mars School District did not provide information about its senior project programs.

Eagle staff writers Amy Cooknick, John Bojarski, Kate Malongowski, Jared Stonesifer and Laurie Lindsay contributed to this report.