TIVERTON — The state Department of Education does not endorse the high school’s plan for students to stand before their English classes to present their senior projects — a new graduation requirement here this year.

But neither will there be sanctions for the school’s decision to forgo judging of the senior projects by groups of judges from the community, according to Elliot Krieger, spokesman for the commissioner of education, Peter J. McWalters.

Instead, the format for judging the senior project has been added to the list of shortcomings the school must address before its plan for implementing the new graduation requirements receives “preliminary approval” from the commissioner, Krieger said.

Most of the problems Tiverton High faces with its graduation plan can be traced to a long-running labor dispute involving teachers, who have been working under court order since last September.

Nonbinding arbitration of a proposed contract, requested by the School Committee, is to begin on Tuesday.

Yesterday, Amy Mullen, president of the teachers union, said she fears the school district is simply “squandering” resources on the fees of lawyers without a guaranteed outcome, as the School Committee is free to reject any decision emerging from the arbitration.

Besides Tiverton High, seven other public high schools, as well as the Rhode Island School for the Deaf, have failed to win the state’s stamp of approval for their graduation plans.

But these schools have a four-year grace period to improve their curricula before the Department of Education yanks their authority to award diplomas.

Tiverton, like other districts, has offered the senior project to students on a voluntary basis for the last several years so that there would be more than one trial run before the comprehensive independent study became a requirement for the current graduating class.

Until now, a high school teacher has volunteered as a senior project coordinator, recruiting outside mentors to help students delve into their special interests and organizing and training judges for the culminating presentations.

But with the contract dispute permeating labor-management relations since last September, teachers have not volunteered to do much beyond their required duties.

Those duties include supervision of senior projects by English teachers as part of the curriculum. And Mullen said yesterday that individual teachers may serve as judges of senior projects presented during the school day.

But the terms now in effect do not provide for a senior projects coordinator, who would bring in judges from outside the school and train them to grade the presentations according to a consistent set of rules.

Nor do the prescribed duties include teachers fulfilling another new state requirement that all high school students have an adult adviser: someone who knows them well and can help them over the rough spots that often occur in adolescence.

In late March, the School Committee passed on a one-year proposal from the union, National Education Association-Tiverton, which would have incorporated both the teachers’ advisory duties and the job of the senior projects coordinator.

Teachers proposed a 3-percent raise across the board, in addition to step increases historically awarded with experience. But they agreed to pay an additional $500 toward the cost of family health insurance premiums. The proposal would have been retroactive to the start of the school year at the end of August.

In March, the School Committee chairwoman, Denise deMedeiros, said the committee had been looking for a two-year contract.

Schools Supt. William J. Rearick accused teachers of holding students hostage by failing to come forward as in the past to coordinate the senior project presentations.

gmacris@projo.com