Requires a total of thirty-six hours, or eight hours per year, for a high school student to graduate.
This bill would amend the New York Education Law to require a community service component for secondary school students. The Commissioner of Education, working with the Board of Regents, would be directed to establish and develop the requirement, and the bill specifies that all students in grades 9 through 12 must complete at least eight hours of community service per academic year.
Under the bill, a total of 36 community service hours would be required for graduation. The measure is framed as a statewide graduation requirement and would apply to all secondary school students, with implementation beginning on the first day of July after enactment. The bill does not specify details such as qualifying service activities, exemptions, or how schools would verify completion, leaving those matters to be developed by education authorities.
If enacted, the bill would add a new section to the Education Law and create a mandatory statewide graduation requirement tied to community service. It would affect public high schools and their students by making service hours part of the path to a diploma, and it would require the Commissioner of Education and the Board of Regents to establish the program’s rules and administration. Schools would likely need to track, document, and enforce service-hour completion for students in grades 9 through 12.
The available record shows no committee transcript, vote tally, or formal action history, so there is no direct evidence of support or opposition from legislative debate. Based on the bill text alone, the proposal appears to be presented as a student civic-engagement requirement rather than a controversial policy change, but the absence of recorded discussion means the overall sentiment cannot be reliably measured from the provided materials.
Because there are no committee transcripts or votes, no specific points of contention are documented in the record provided. Potential areas of debate, however, would likely include whether a mandatory service requirement is appropriate for graduation, how students with work, family, disability, transportation, or scheduling constraints would meet the hours, and whether the state should set the requirement directly or leave it to local districts. The bill also leaves unanswered how service would be defined and verified, which could be a practical point of disagreement.