Students enrolling in early admissions, an option where they can take all of their  classes at Eastern Florida State College — previously known as Brevard Community College — beginning in the fall term of their senior year, will face with a change of policy as they’re forced to take a fifth class instead of the required four.

“We require our Early Admission kids to take five classes, unless there’s extenuating circumstances, as we’ve had several instances where a student will start a class and fail to continue it, and if they have five and are then reduced to four they’ll stay in early admissions,” Lovel said.  “However, if they only had four, now it’s too late to register for another class, meaning they’ll have to return to our school, and what would we have available? Probably nothing that would be worthwhile for them to get into, and they’d already be late and behind. By requiring them to do five classes this upcoming school year, we’re going to avoid those problems.”

Students preparing for early admissions have mixed feelings over the newly enforced rule.

“Planning my class schedule for next year, I only really needed four classes to finish up my credits,” junior Shaun Wilson said, who’s participating in the Early Admission program. “At first I was annoyed that I had to take an extra class just because of students messing up in the past, but realizing my fifth class can practically be an elective of my choice, I don’t mind.”

While this new standard has some students complaining, Assistant Principal Jackie Ingratta strongly supports the change.

“There’s not a whole lot of guidance when seniors go off to BCC and sometimes some students are not necessarily mature enough to be able to handle that level where there’s nobody watching them,” Ingratta said. “When a fourth class would get dropped, all of the sudden I’d get a couple of students that cannot graduate high school because they’re now short of a class. We make them take the five so if that does happen I can ensure they still graduate.”

The five class rule aids seniors in successfully completing their last year of school and graduating.