New York state has a minimum lab requirement for all students in high school science courses.  Students must successfully complete a minimum of 1200 minutes of lab instruction.  Since Shenendehowa classes are 40 minutes in length, 1200 minutes is the same as 30 class periods.  Most teachers generally refer to the minimum NYS lab requirement as 30 periods in length.  Students must actually perform lab experiments based on a minimum of 30 class periods and write up these experiments to the satisfaction of the teacher.  Each teacher will announce their grading standards for satisfactory completion of labs. 

The NYS lab requirement must be met by all students by a standardized date (around the end of May).  Failure to complete the NYS lab requirement by the announced date means that the student will not be allowed to take the Regents exam in June.  Since summer school does not have a lab component, the students will not be allowed to take summer school classes for any course in which the lab requirement has not been met.