PONDERAY — Officials from the Idaho Department of Education visited Ponderay Wednesday seeking input on proposed changes to graduation requirements. 

The stop in Bonner County was part of a statewide outreach tour ahead of a November State Board of Education vote that will determine if the changes are placed before legislators in 2025. 

“The reality is that statewide, the graduation requirements have not been comprehensively reviewed or updated in over 10 years,” said Allison Duman, IDE K-12 workforce project specialist. “There's a lot of change that has happened in that last decade.” 

The proposed changes — which include mandating digital literacy education for Idaho high schoolers — are reflective of IDE’s recent effort to ready students for a diverse variety of workplaces. 

“10–15 years ago, there was a really strong push and focus on getting students to go on to a two- or four-year college degree, and our current graduation requirements reflect that,” Duman said. 

Duman added that not all students want to follow that path, and told local educators present, “we feel strongly that our recommendations really focus on that shift that we're seeing right now in preparing students for whatever their post-secondary goals are.” 

The digital literacy component of the proposed changes would swap an existing one-credit communications requirement for a new one-credit digital literacy course aiming to equip students to live in an increasingly online world. 

The proposed requirement would teach students technical skills like coding, but also how to parse and evaluate information from the internet, examine the trade-offs of convenience and privacy, and exist in a world with rapidly evolving artificial intelligence. 

If approved, the requirement would be phased in gradually and only apply to students graduating after Jan. 1, 2028. 

Also among the proposed changes was the implementation of a “Future Readiness Project” for high school seniors, which would replace the existing senior project completed by all Idaho twelfth graders 

“The real change here is that we're heavily focused on an experiential component,” Duman said. 

To complete the project, students might leave school to shadow a worker in their prospective career or visit a workplace related to an area of interest. 

If the change is implemented, Clark Fork Junior/Senior High School will be ready for it. 

“We’re already doing this,” Phil Kemink, Clark Fork Junior/Senior High School principal, said at the meeting. 

Every Clark Fork senior currently participates in a semester-long internship with a local business and presents a research project before a panel of judges unaffiliated with the school. 

“It’s a monster,” Kemink said of organizing the program. “It’s an amazing experience, but there's some work that goes into pulling it off.”

Whether or not the proposed changes make it through the legislative gauntlet in the next year, Bonner County Students will see their career-readiness opportunities grow.  

The district announced in August it had been awarded a $3.5 million state grant to build the Career Technical Education Center of North Idaho — a facility and program that could prepare students for careers as electricians, plumbers, foresters, and other professions. 

Students across Bonner and Boundary counties will be eligible to use the facility once it is completed and will have an opportunity to take steps to prepare themselves for successful careers and meet the needs of Idaho’s fast-growing professional landscape.