SOUTH DEERFIELD — Frontier Regional School administrators pitched their revised graduation requirement proposal to the School Committee this week, as schools around the state prepare for the fallout of Question 2.

In 2024’s election, 59% of voters opted to repeal the requirement that students pass the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System exam, which public school students are required to take in 10th grade, in order to graduate high school. Instead, students are now required to complete coursework certified by their local school board.

Graduation requirements have always been certified by school committees, while the MCAS served as the statewide competency determination for all students. With MCAS repealed as this requirement, but still required to be assessed, Frontier administrators said they have been examining the best way to move forward.

That step forward, presented by Director of Education, Secondary Focus Sarah Mitchell on Tuesday, is to make Frontier’s competency determination the completion of 10th grade English, geometry, biology and U.S. history, which all students take in their freshman or sophomore years.

Then, as part of the school’s graduation requirement, students must pass the 10th grade MCAS exams in English, math and biology. If they do not pass the MCAS, they can then get a passing score on the PSAT or Accuplacer exams. Finally, if they do not get a qualifying score on either of those exams, a student can get a qualifying score on the Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA) to receive a diploma.

“We’re asking as an administrative team that we make taking MCAS, not passing MCAS, part of our graduation requirement,” Mitchell said, adding that they are using 10th grade classes because that will give students two years to pass the courses, if they need the additional time.

The other key aspects of the proposal are federal regulations still require school districts to proctor the MCAS — which takes up time during at least a minimum of five school days — and Frontier, according to Mitchell, uses the exam to gauge its curriculum alignment with the state, for scholarships and as a measure of student proficiency, as well as a way to determine next steps for students with an Individualized Education Program (IEP).

“We’re spending five days giving this assessment to grade 10 students and that’s a lot of time invested,” Mitchell said, adding that requiring some sort of passing score on an assessment is “a way to continue to have them have buy-in” to the test. “We need students to take it seriously.”

A few School Committee members on Tuesday, though, said they were uncomfortable with continuing to rely on standardized testing as a graduation requirement.

Members Philip Kantor and Jessica Corwin pushed back against the proposal, with Corwin suggesting there are other ways that students could be assessed beyond standardized testing, as some students have severe anxiety when taking an exam.

“It’s not really inclusive of the neurodiversity of our student population,” Corwin said. “We should still give them a diploma if their teachers think they met Massachusetts frameworks from assessing in other ways that are more student-centered than standardized testing, which in no way resembles what students do in real life.”

Superintendent Darius Modestow and School Committee member Keith McFarland disagreed, as once students leave high school — or, even during high school — they face stressful tests of all kinds. Modestow shared that one of his kids recently went through the process of getting their driver’s license and it was “one of the most stressful moments of their life.”

“We have to prepare kids for when they leave here and they’re going to hit tests in every job application,” McFarland said. “If they’re on a college track and they want to go into different professions, they’re tested and we have to prepare them.”

A vote on the proposed graduation requirements will be taken at the Frontier School Committee’s next meeting.

Chris Larabee can be reached at clarabee@recorder.com.