YOUNGER STUDENTS EARNING COMMUNITY SERVICE CREDITS

Many Clarence High School students are taking advantage of a newopportunity to complete some of their community service requirementbefore senior year.

Fifty percent of sophomores and an even larger number of juniorshave accumulated some community service credits, according to JerryCappello, coordinator of the program and chairman of the socialstudies department.

At this week's School Board meeting, Cappello said the numbersindicate accomplishment of a major goal: to get students involved inthe community at a younger age. Administrators say there is lessdisaffection among students who are involved in such activities.

The new provision, approved by the board last year, continued the32-hour community service obligation but dropped a requirement tocomplete those hours during the senior year.

Students can now complete up to 14 hours in their freshman,sophomore and junior years. While seniors must perform 18 or morehours of service in specific nonprofit agencies, younger studentscan satisfy the requirement by volunteering with a nonprofitorganization or joining a high school group that conducts a service-related activity.

Performance-based activities, such as sports teams or musicalgroups, do not count toward the community service credit. Also, inan effort to encourage participation in more than one group,students can receive no more than seven hours of credit from anysingle school organization.

Cappello, one of several department chairmen who discussed theirgoals with the board, said he hopes to eventually put communityservice records into a document library so parents can access suchinformation on the Internet.

Trustees inquired about the pre-engineering program, Project Leadthe Way, and were told by Scott Chandler, chairman of the technologydepartment, that students are doing well with the courses.

Chandler noted that Clarence was one of the first local schoolsto participate in the national Project Lead the Way, which willconduct a professional survey to track students' progress for up tofour years after graduation.

He said Clarence would like to be host to a conference in Januaryfor all of the area's participating schools. The event would providean opportunity to share information, Chandler said. Fifteen schoolsnow offer the pre-engineering program, with five or six to be addedin a year or two.

In other reports:

Another counselor may be necessary to help with new requirementsfor career development and academic intervention, according toElizabeth Horrigan, chairwoman of the guidance department. She saidcounselors must now meet with high school students once a year justto focus on career planning. The session must be separate from anyother meetings.

Foreign language enrollment is up, said department Chairman PaulRomanowski, who anticipates a need for more classroom space andteachers. He also cited a recent survey on the importance of foreignlanguage study, particularly Latin, to high performance on theverbal portion of the SAT.

Students' reading abilities have not been diminished by the useof computers, according to Joanne Jochum, chairman of the Englishdepartment. They are, however, reading different materials, Jochumsaid, in response to a question. She took an informal survey thatindicates students are getting much of their information frommagazines and the Internet.