That is a wonderful story about your student! Thanks for sharing.
The flowchart I've attached shows the possible courses that students can take in high school in my province. Calculus is needed if you are going to be going into a science major in university. I don't know what my son will be taking in the future, but I want to keep all his doors open.
As you can see, they don't separate the courses into Algebra 1, Algebra 2 etc. So I am having difficulty knowing how to make the BJU math progression work for us.