Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School’s School Advisory Council met on Wednesday, Dec. 6 in the media center to cover topics regarding senior graduation, midterm schedules and new programs, such as the Advanced International Certificate of Education program being implemented next year. This month’s meeting was led by SAC co-chair Holly Van Tassel-Schuster and Principal Michelle Kefford.

One of the first topics discussed was this year’s graduating class. Senior graduation requirements are expected to be fulfilled faster than previous years in the upcoming semester.

“We’re expecting under 10 [seniors] right now, which is honestly unheard of for us to be in December and only have seven to 10 students who have yet to meet the graduation requirement,” Van Tassel-Schuster said. “So they still have multiple opportunities to do that. We are focused on juniors as well, [on] having them under 100 by the end of the year which would be great heading into next year.”

Exam exemptions were discussed in detail during the meeting, as the procedures for this year’s exams will change slightly from last year. Instead of full days, exams will occur on half days, and students will not require forms to sign out early or come in late. Missing a day that a student has exempted will not count against the new 10-10-10 attendance rule.

Next year’s Cambridge AICE program has already released the courses being offered. These courses, such as Marine Science and English General Paper, are available on next year’s freshman course card for college credit.

To begin the AICE track, incoming freshmen and sophomores must select two AICE classes to take their first year of the course, and continue for the next two or three years until graduation. If they complete the graduation requirements, they will be awarded the separate AICE diploma.

“The kids who are enrolling in ninth and 10th next year, we’re going to gear them towards that diploma track and that we have different course offerings and additional courses being added each subsequent year,” Principal Michelle Kefford said. “So we’re excited about that. We don’t know yet how many will take advantage, we’re waiting for the correspondents to come back. But that’s going to be a new endeavor for us and we look forward to questions about Cambridge.”

After the SAC meeting was adjourned, the School Advisory Forum meeting began to discuss what occurred at the last meeting on Oct. 4. The meeting that was due to occur last month was canceled due to the unexpected rain day on Nov. 16.

As a result of this issue, procedures for a new online information portal were brought into light for the first time. As a replacement for all of Clever’s numerous applications, a single application would be the directory for all information regarding grades and graduation information. This proposition is still in planning and is not confirmed.

“I believe there’s a pilot that’s in place right now regarding the class schedules that will be used by a high school and that’s in progress right now,” SAF co-chair Becky Leung said. “The students who are incoming freshmen to high school should use a portal, we actually will have their course cards still in hand for this year. So the transition is going to be from physical course cards to this actual application.”

Further details regarding the new application will be expanded upon in further upcoming meetings; for now, all that should be noted is that all student information should be inputted into Virtual Counselor and parents should have access to that application. The information from Virtual Counselor will directly transfer over to the new application when it is implemented.