Feb. 13—CHEYENNE — After five Burns High School seniors were told they weren’t on track to graduate in May due to administrative errors, Laramie County School District 2 faced backlash and criticism from the community for the mistake. On Monday, the LCSD2 Board of Trustees unanimously approved a request to waive the requirement that was holding them back.

“If we can’t figure it out the right way, then I guess we’re going to have to go to the top and figure out who dropped the ball, and maybe they need to figure out the hard way that they don’t need to be around anymore,” said Aaron Hansen before a decision was made. Hansen is the father of one of the five Burns seniors who was notified less than a month ago they wouldn’t graduate in May. The issue arose when the students were told they were lacking one foreign language credit to meet the graduation requirement due to a district policy change in March 2023. However, at the beginning of the school year, all students had received notice from the district that they were on track to graduate.

“I would like comfort,” said CharleMarie Jackson, one of the Burns seniors informed she was no longer on track to graduate. “I would like to know that 100%, no doubt about it, that this year will go by, my last semester will end just fine, and I’ll walk across that stage at the end.”

Jackson said at least two of the five seniors have already committed to play sports in college after graduation.

Multiple solutions were proposed, including one where the five students enrolled and participated in an accelerated Spanish course every day during the school’s 30-minute free study period until graduation. The parents of the students expressed that this solution would be inadequate.

In a letter to LCSD2 trustees, Burns Junior/Senior High School Principal Bobby Dishman asked board members to waive the foreign language requirement for the five students, which is what they did Monday.

“[LCSD2] is here for the education of these kids,” said Trustee Dave Keiter. “When you change procedures and policies and things like that that leave the educational part of the process out of the equation, I think that does a disservice to everyone in the district. It does a disservice to the school district itself.”

The board members said they didn’t feel that they were inadequately educating these students because they all took a foreign language course in either seventh or eighth grade.

“Most importantly, I feel like the students have done the work. They did it in seventh grade and in eighth grade, so it’s not like we’re letting them slide by without doing something,” said Trustee Julianne Randall. “… I think it’s a wake-up call to all of us that it’s not the kind of thing that we would want to happen.”

Randall, who was unable to attend the initial board meeting on the issue, expressed concern with conversations about having accelerated Spanish courses during the study period. She said that time is sacred for teachers to catch up on work and important for students, especially near the end of the school year, to prepare for exams and extracurricular events like FFA and FBLA.

Regardless, the course will be available for the five students if they would like to take it, but not required.

“This is one of those things that, it’s just an eye-opener, that we need to fix,” Randall said before a decision was made to waive the requirement. “And I think we will fix it.”

Noah Zahn is the Wyoming Tribune Eagle’s local government/business reporter. He can be reached at 307-633-3128 or nzahn@wyomingnews.com. Follow him on X @NoahZahnn.