Oak Harbor school leaders are figuring the best way to expand the math requirement that students need to graduate from high school.

The Legislature this year delayed by several years the requirement that students pass the math WASL to graduate, but added more math to the required high school curriculum.

Plans call for adding another credit at Oak Harbor High School, which means students will need another year of math to meet graduation requirements. That ups the math requirement from two to three years.

Oak Harbor School District Superintendent Rick Schulte said the district had been talking about increasing the math requirement even before the state law was enacted.

“Students need to have a higher level of skill in math than they could get in two years,” Schulte said, noting that employees and colleges are both demanding better math skills.

Dwight Lundstrom, principal of Oak Harbor High School, said that students often meet the current math requirements during their first two years and then don’t take math classes in their junior and senior years. By the time they enter college, their math skills have deteriorated and they end up taking remedial classes.

“Like any skill, you need to keep doing it to stay good at it,” Lundstrom said.

Schulte said there is evidence suggesting that students who reach the second year of algebra are more likely to pass the math WASL than students who take just one year of algebra and geometry.

He said the majority of Oak Harbor High School students already take three or more math classes before they graduate.

The class of 2008 was supposed to be the first class required to pass the math, reading and writing portion of the test in order to graduate. Now, the Legislature has delayed the math requirement until 2013. Instead, students who fail the math assessment have to take, and pass, additional math classes until they either pass the WASL or graduate.

School staff will spend the coming months figuring out the best way to expand the math requirement. Currently students are required to earn 23 credits in order to graduate. If they attend school six hours a day, then they could earn a maximum of 24 credits. State requirements say a student has to earn a minimum of 19 credits in order to graduate.

Schulte said that he didn’t know whether the district would increase the graduation requirements to 24 credits, or reduce the required number of elective courses and replace it with the math requirement.

Graduation requirements for high school students have increased over the years.

The extra math graduation requirement is expected to go before the Oak Harbor School Board next spring. If implemented, the class of 2012, this year’s eighth-graders, would be the first class required to pass three years of math to graduate from high school.