High School Community Service Requirement
 

Did your high school have a community service requirement for graduation?

If so, how many hours?

Did you agree with it?

The DC Public Schools instituted a community service requirement with the class of 1995 (I believe), so by the time my class came around, we were prepared for it. Even though, of course several students were scrambling in June to find something to do.

I performed a few of my hours as a Freshman through JROTC and another random program. But most of mine came from being a Junior Counselor for HOBY. (Hugh O'Bryan Youth Leadership Program)

My HS required a minimum of 80 hours of community service for graduation.

I volunteered as a candy striper at the hospital and went back to my old middle school and helped teachers with projects and coached cheerleading.

I suppose I agreed with it. It was Catholic school, after all.

How funny, Rashid. I was a HOBY leader too!

It must be the two glasses of really crappy wine I had earlier (Arbor mist, anyone?), but I read that you were a candy stripper...
:p

I did not, nor did husband, but our oldest son does have that requirement. He has to have so many documented service hours a year.

Mine did not, but it was part of the requirement to be considered for NHS. I volunteered for a couple of years at a local elementary school, and helped run some canned food drives.

No my high school didn't have a community service requirement for graduation (nor does it have now). Although like KSigKid, if you were part of NHS, French NHS, Spanish NHS, or the like you were required to do community service.

My district required 40 hours by the time you graduate from high school. Some people were always scrambling at the end (like my sister), but come on, that's 10 hours a year! I ended up with 201. Most were from stuff with my Norwegian club, and I got a ton from being a counselor in training. (Hey, I wasn't getting paid!)

My high school didn't require it, but the organizations that I was a part of (NHS, Leadership Academy, PALS, among others) did require service. I ended up with several hundred hours because of these groups.

Depending on the program you chose for your senior year from my high school, (ex: school to career, college prep, etc.) there were varying community service requirements for graduation. If you chose to apply for early release (leaving at 12pm) for school to career (work or internship) you had 40 hours to complete. If you were college prep, I think it was 60.

I didn't have any graduation requirements in high school, but the charter school I work at does.

The charter high school has a 60 hours requirement. The kids can either do it at one time, or split it up over four years.

Here's a link to the graduation requirements: http://www.agcharter.org/page.cfm?p=35

We were only required to do Community Service to be a part of Freshman Honor Society, Sophomore Honor Society, or NHS (provided, of course, your grades were good enough to get in any of the 3 orgs).

While I believe they did not when I was in school (since I grew up in the 'burbs and not in the city itself) I do know that the Chicago Public Schools require 40 hours of community service (as do the alternative high schools that are affiliated with them as well).

I think it's important in this day and age for kids to realize that it's not always 'about them'. I also think that the right community service choice could lead to a possible career path/opportunity down the line.

*This is of course coming from someone who did 60 of her required hours (10 each for Frosh and Soph honor society and 40 for NHS) in high school and went on after college to do Americorps (and did over 2000 hours of service)

Had to do community service for National Honor Society.

I accumulated a massive amount of detention hours my senior for being late to class. It got to the point where realistically I couldn’t serve all my detention hours with the amount of school days that were left. If I wanted to walk I had to do community service in place of detention. I ended up doing community service through my church.

When I graduated in '96, my hs did not have a community service requirement - but I still had more than 400 hours on my transcript by the time I graduated. Now the district has a 40-hour minimum requirement.

In order to get the IB diploma, we had to do a total of 200 community service hours, 100 of which had to be in a dedicated project.

i LOVE that requirement being towards a DEDICATED project.

My county has a service requirement now. back in the old millenium when i graduated, i don't think they had it. however, i did a major amount of service through church, kitty hawk (AFJROTC honor society), and sga.

question:

i sit on a couple of scholarship review panels and all the awards require community service. since all the school local districts MANDATE kids complete X number of hours, i don't give points for doing the minimum. I give points for longevity and whether or not someone from the place they claimed they've done 40 million hours of service writes them a rec.

i feel like the kid who has volunteered consistently over a year or so at one place is more dedicated than the kid who volunteers somewhere different every saturday AND lists ALLLLLLLLL of those places on an application. I've gotten into heated debate with the rest of the panel about this.

do you guys have thoughts about this?

I think you're right on.

However, the rules of the committee need to be officially changed to reflect the times. Or at least to reflect the quality of the service and not the quantity.

I absolutely agree. In my case, 200 hours over 4 years is nothing--that ends up being roughly 2 hours a week when school's in session (I ended up having more than 150 hours just for my mentoring project). By taking on a dedicated project, you get to know the people at the organization, which means that they know you and your work really well.

You can't reward people for doing just the minimum.

I had to do 100 hrs, and you couldn't spend less than 20 hrs/project.

I was the director of the liturgy choir for my service hours.

great point!

Most public districts in Florida do not require community service, although it is required by the state in order to receive the Bright Futures Scholarship! Because this scholarship funds 75-100% of tuition at public universities and colleges, student applying for the scholarship have to have at least 75 hours.

It was 100 hours for me a few years ago, though i know I had way more than that!

after i "graduated" from elementary school i went to catholic school that was 7-12 grade and we had to complete a minimum of 20 hours a year which resulted in 120 hours before graduation (only the hours you accumulated in high school were sent off with transcripts) My junior year they added 6th grade to the middle school and bumped up the community service to 30 hours a year with 180 hours before graduation.

They also had rules for the service hours as well. The big rule was that all of your hours could not be at one place (i.e. if you helped out with basketball camp at school you would get 30 something hours but only 10 would count for your 20 or 15 for your 30.. you could also only count a certain number of hours you accumulated at your church for service hours as well *same thing only 10 would count even if you got 20 hrs there*

Really confusing, I know but it's easy once you get used to the system.

We had to participate in a Sophomore Service Project. Basically you chose one group to work with and you did community service with them for the year. Each organization had different requirements so it wasn't a set number of hours. I did my project with a group called Phone Friend, which was an afterschool help line for latch-key children. We read stories, told jokes, and were a friendly voice if a kid was home alone and scared.

At the end of the year we had to write a term paper on our experiences. We weren't required to continue working with our groups, but most people did.