TRENTON Dissecting animals, long a rite of passage in New Jersey high school science classes, may soon become optional. The state legislature last week passed a bill that requires all school districts in New Jersey to provide alternatives to students who don’t want to dissect an animal. The bill, passed by a large margin in the assembly and unanimously approved by the senate, now awaits signature by the governor. Some legislators said dissection is an outdated process that doesn’t always benefit students who may oppose it for moral reasons or are just squeamish. ``I think it’s just an archaic way of teaching anatomy at a lower level,’’ Assemblyman Joseph Pennacchio, R-Morris, said. Pennacchio also said he didn’t see the merit of unnecessarily killing animals for high school biology classes. ``We’re the shepherds of these animals,’’ he said. ``It really has to be very practical and there has to be a good reason to do it.’’ Some districts in New Jersey have already been offering students alternatives to animal dissection. At Randolph High School, science and technology supervisor Reg Edmonds said dissection hasn’t been a mainstay of the science program there for almost a decade. ``Occasionally if there’s student interest, there’s dissection of a fetal pig ...Nationally it’s becoming less emphasized,’’ Edmonds said. But some Garden State schools would punish students by lowering grades if they opposed dissection, said Assemblyman Jeff Van Drew, D-Cape May and a co-sponsor of the bill. Alternatives to dissection include viewing dissections by video. A spokesman for the New Jersey School Boards Association, Frank Belluscio, expressed concern that alternatives to dissection like the videos may require extra costs for districts. Belluscio said the state should assist in paying for different teaching methods.