High school students in Marana are being encouraged to take no fewer than five courses after a state audit showed many of them failed to meet the minimum instruction time to be considered full-time students.
State requirements put in place in 2013 say students are required to complete four, one-hour blocks of instruction to be considered full-time, said Charles Tack, an Arizona Department of Education spokesman. An audit in May found that Maranaβs high schools had four, 52- or 53- minute blocks, making it about 30 minutes short of the state requirement.
That meant 134 students who Marana reported as attending full-time during fiscal years 2013, 2014 and 2015 should have been categorized as part-time students. The state said the misclassification meant the district was overpaid by about $147,000 and must repay ADE for the three fiscal years audited.
The district was not aware of the issue until the audit was sent in May, district spokeswoman Tamara Crawley said. Because it was the end of the school year, immediate changes could not be made.
Marana schools have made changes according to the audit, she said.
To fix the issue of its high school students not meeting instruction time requirements, Marana officials are encouraging students this year to take five instead of four classes.
Starting next school year five classes will become the minimum number of classes students will be allowed to take, Crawley said.
