Community service graduation requirements by state, 2026.

A growing number of states and districts now require students to complete community service before they can graduate. The hour totals vary widely, but the direction is consistent: boards want service documented, not just reported.

Below is a snapshot of current requirements, followed by what these mandates mean for the schools that have to track and verify them.

What states and districts currently require

• Arkansas: Under Act 237 of 2023 (the LEARNS Act), students graduating in 2026-27 and beyond must complete 75 documented hours of community service across grades 9-12 — 15 hours in ninth grade and 20 hours in each grade after that, per Arkansas Department of Education guidance.
• Georgia (Henry County Schools): Students entering ninth grade in fall 2024 and later, starting with the Class of 2028, must complete 0.5 units, or 20 hours, of community service, logged through the district's student information portal and confirmed by an approved organization.
• Maryland: Maryland requires 75 hours of student service learning for all public school students statewide — the first state to adopt a service-learning graduation requirement.
• Washington, D.C.: D.C. Public Schools require 100 community service hours for the Class of 2026 and beyond.

Requirement design also varies. Some states set a single total; Arkansas and similar policies phase hours in by grade level. Some districts publish an approved-organization list; others accept any verifiable service. Districts weighing a new policy should expect to make these same design choices — for a closer look at how one Florida district structured its own 20-hour requirement, see our related post on building a verified graduation service-hour workflow.

Why the hour count is the easy part

Setting a number is a policy decision. Proving that students met it is an operations problem, and it is usually the harder one.

Henry County's policy is a useful example: students without an exemption who fall short receive an incomplete transcript notation and become ineligible for graduation. That is a real consequence, which means the underlying record needs to hold up to scrutiny from families, counselors, and the board — not just look complete on the surface.

What a defensible tracking process needs

Whether a district requires 20 hours or 100, the same operational questions apply.

• Can students log service as it happens, instead of reconstructing years of activity before graduation?
• Does an agency or supervisor verify participation before staff approve it for credit?
• Can staff see, by grade level and campus, which students are on track and which are behind — before it becomes a graduation-week emergency?
• Can the district produce an export for board reporting or an audit without rebuilding the data by hand?

Districts phasing in a new requirement, like Arkansas's grade-by-grade minimums, have an added need: a system that can report progress against an interim target, not just a final total.

Where this is headed

As more states publish service-learning standards and more districts follow, paper forms and spreadsheets get harder to defend. A verified digital record — student submission, agency confirmation, school approval, exportable report — is quickly becoming the baseline expectation, not a nice-to-have.

If your board is evaluating a new community service graduation policy, start by separating the policy question (how many hours, what counts) from the operations question (how hours get logged, verified, approved, and reported). Both need an answer before the first cohort reaches senior year.