Policy change makes five valedictorian students

Last month’s change in school board policy that allowed students to take up to two classes on a pass/fail basis was intended to keep students from dropping college courses. However, the change may have had unintended consequences. Two students and some parents spoke at the school board meeting Monday about the change in valedictorian status for three students who hadn’t had a 4.0 GPA before the policy change.

One student argued that even with a high level of academic achievement, students who didn’t have a 4.0 before the change shouldn’t have valedictorian status. “That’ll help them scholarship-wise, but I feel that once they do take a class pass, they should be out of the running because they did not maintain an A for the 4.0,” she said. She suggested that those students be honored as salutatorians instead.

An attending parent pointed out other consequences. “Because you just up and changed the rule, you changed it in the middle, it affected those students in the way of what they were going to take for college classes,” she said, suggesting that students may have chosen classes differently if they’d known at the start of the semester they’d be allowed to take a class pass/fail.

For the full report on the school board meeting, see the March 17 edition of the Monitor.