For a student to graduate in Maryland, he/she is required to complete one semester of a health-education course.  In MCPS, students are given the opportunity to take this course either in school, online during the summer or in summer school. 
 According to assistant principal Jan Fisher, there are 306 students who are taking health in school this year, while 106 students took Honors Health this past summer. In addition, a number of students took the course online over the summer. The requirement is in obvious need of change.
 As the health course is only a one-semester-long class, it requires students to take another course for half a credit the next semester. Unfortunately, CHS offers very few other one-semester classes, so students have a limited choice of classes and  find themselves enrolled in an elective class in which they have little interest. 
Many students, especially those in double period classes and Signature Programs, take health over the summer because they do not have time in their schedule to take it during the school year.   
It is unreasonable that so many students are pushed into completing the health requirement over the summer and not during the school year solely to meet Maryland’s graduation requirement.  Not only do students have to sacrifice part of their summer, but they have to pay to meet a graduation requirement. This past summer, both the online health course and summer school class cost $310 per student. This is a significant amount of money for students and it cannot be expected that every family can afford to pay.
 One way that MCPS could approach this issue could be to require a semester of Physical Education (P.E.), with the other half of the year having students complete the health course. In fact, according to the Maryland State Department of Education, students only need to complete a half credit of P.E. in order to graduate from a Maryland public school, meaning that MCPS students take an extra semester of P.E. than is mandated by the state to graduate.
 Though some may argue that a semester of P.E. is too beneficial to students’ health to lose, health classes and P.E. are very much related to one other.  In fact, according to the MCPS website, the purpose of P.E. is “to help students become responsible citizens who are both physically educated and health literate,” while the purpose of the health course is to “emphasize lifelong positive health related attitudes and behaviors that promote self-reliance and self-regulation for all students while promoting health literacy.” 
 If the goals of health class and P.E. are the same, then making both of them two half credit courses would make it easier for students to take better advantage of other academic classes that CHS offers.