Future Leaders of America call on district officials to align A-G and high school graduation requirements

Shortly after Dioceline Araujo moved from New Cuyama to Santa Maria during her freshman year of high school, a guest speaker visited one of her classes to discuss college.

“‘Who here knows about A-G?’” Araujo said the speaker asked. As hands around the classroom shot up, Araujo sat still in confusion. “Like the alphabet?” Araujo wondered.

Araujo, now a senior at Ernest Righetti High School, soon learned that A-G subject requirements are a set of courses California high school students must complete in order to apply to a four-year university. A-G requirements are substantially different from the courses required to graduate high school, and are typically more difficult.

“I thought you just graduated high school and you got to choose whatever university or whatever college you wanted to go to,” Araujo told the audience at a Future Leaders of America community forum on May 9.

At the forum, Santa Maria’s Future Leaders of America members presented information and data they spent nearly eight months gathering through thorough research, including a 1,600 student survey and months of discussions with peers and community members.

The students found that in 2015, the most recent data available at the time, only about 26 percent of Santa Maria Joint Union High School District (SMJUHSD) graduates completed their A-G courses. That means only 26 percent of local students were eligible to apply to University of California or California State University schools that year.

In 2016, only 24 percent of SMJUHSD graduates were able to apply to four-year universities, according to data collected by the California Department of Education. That number dropped even further in 2017, when only about 20 percent of local graduates completed their A-Gs.

Like so many of her peers, Araujo fell behind in A-G requirements her junior year, when a few especially challenging courses and a whirlwind of personal issues seemed to hit all at once.

“My senior year I talked to my counselor about my grades and about credits and she looks at me and she says, ‘You know what, I think maybe it’s time to just focus on graduating and let go of the idea of A-G requirements,” Araujo said at the forum.

That meant forgoing any possibility of attending a four-year school immediately after high school graduation. Without A-G requirements completed, Araujo would have to transfer out of a two-year school in order to get into a university.

“And I agreed, but it was devastating,” Araujo said. “Going straight to a university was—is—my dream. I’d be the first one in my family to go to a university, and I feel like I have that pressure on my shoulders.”

Araujo said that if A-Gs had been required to graduate high school, she may have been motivated enough to get the work done. Many other student speakers agreed.

Of the 1,600 SMJUHSD students surveyed, 75 percent said that while they knew their A-Gs, they weren’t taking the courses necessary to complete the requirements. Still, Santa Maria High School sophomore Katherine Alvarez said that 80 percent of students surveyed said they’d like to go to a four-year university.

The students called on SMJUHSD officials to align A-G requirements with courses required for high school graduation, a move that Oxnard Union High School District approved on May 9. Oxnard students will be expected to meet the same A-G requirements to graduate by 2024, according to Future Leaders of America Executive Director Eder Gaona-Macedo.

“They have very similar statistics, very similar demographics, and we were looking at the data, it just makes sense to do something similar here,” Gaona-Macedo said at the forum.

Staff Writer Kasey Bubnash writes School Scene each week. Information can be sent to the Sun via mail, fax, or email at [email protected]

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