LEWISTON – Music teacher Kyle Jordan worries that the state’s good intentions may hurt his students.

Proposed rules aimed at revamping Maine’s high school graduation requirements seem too ambiguous, with too much room for weakening arts education.

“I think that what’s needed is debate,” said Jordan, who teaches at Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School in Paris.

There was little of that on Wednesday as more than 100 teachers and administrators from around the region gathered at Lewiston High School. Their aim: to hear a presentation from the Maine Department of Education on its proposal.

“Tonight is an informational session,” Education Department spokeswoman Wanda Monthey said at the meeting’s opening. “This is not a hearing. The report is not going to be changed.”

For more than an hour, Monthey and Shannon Welsh, School Union 30’s superintendent, briefed the group. School Union 30 encompasses Lisbon and Durham.

The report, being revised for presentation to the Maine Legislature, would reshape high school for many students.

Today, graduating seniors must have 13 credits total in English, math, science and social studies. They must have one credit each in physical education and fine arts and a half credit in health and wellness.

Overall, they need 24 to graduate.

The new proposal would keep the basic four studies: English, math, social studies and science. In three other areas – health and physical education, visual and performing arts and world languages – the diploma would require exposure in each with credits earned in at least one.

It would affect children entering high school in 2012.

Many attendees at Wednesday’s meeting said they were concerned about unanswered questions, particularly the issue of what constitutes “exposure” to world languages or the arts.

Those are questions that have yet to be answered, said Welsh, who was part of the 16-member group that wrote the report. The entire document is available on the Web at www.maine.gov/education/diploma/index.html.

“Trust us,” Welsh said.

The intention of the rules is to force schools across Maine to make such skills as speaking a foreign language universal.

“It isn’t meant to weaken education,” she said. “I see it as strengthening it.”

Monthey said she saw the changes as part of an ongoing evolution in Maine’s education rules, continuing the work of the long-debated Maine Learning Results initiative.

In response, she heard only worry.

“I have severe concerns,” said James Handy, a member of the Lewiston School Committee. “This seems like a dumbing down of the Maine Learning Results.”

Phil Hammett, an art teacher at Oxford Hills, said he was worried that the arts would no longer be an essential part of the high school experience, as defined by the Learning Results.

“Are we preparing students for a future which is constantly changing?” he asked. “If we degrade our learning, we degrade our economy.”

The graduation requirements are expected to be debated by the Legislature’s Education Committee in March. Public hearings will follow.