Blue Hills Regional Vocational Technical — Curriculum

Across the 2025-26 school year, Blue Hills Regional Vocational Technical has reworked its curriculum at multiple levels, starting with policy and ending with classroom schedules. In December 2025, the committee responded to Massachusetts ending the MCAS graduation requirement by adopting a local competency-determination policy: students now must complete required courses and pass a locally administered assessment or capstone pathway to earn a diploma, keeping the bar for graduation in district hands.

Building on that framework, in March 2026 the committee approved a new Program of Studies that both updates the academic sequence and expands vocational offerings. The upper-grade core science sequence changes, with STEM becoming the grade 11 core science course and Environmental Science the grade 12 core course, while Earth Science moves to a virtual earthquake science class to be taught by a teacher with a grant from the National Science Foundation and private donations, intended to open for students in the 2026-27 school year. The approved Program of Studies also adds History Through Sports to the humanities list.

Together, these changes signal a shift from state-mandated graduation standards to district-defined competency, and from the traditional science rotation to a STEM-aligned sequence—across both academic and vocational programming,