Friday, April 13, 2001
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Friday, April 13, 2001 |
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Board considers weighted grade policy By JOHN
THOMPSON
Should the school system give an added weight to college classes that high school students take? That's the issue that Coweta County school board officials are trying to sort out after a messy snafu involving the salutatorian at Northgate High School. Originally, Northgate officials had tabbed Justin Dunn as this year's salutatorian. But then the board decided to make Amanda Kerlin co-salutatorian because she was jointly enrolled at the Academy of Georgia at the State University of West Georgia and her college classes were given an added weight of 1.15 by Northgate officials. The problem is the official school board policy states that college classes should not receive any extra weight. School Superintendent Richard Brooks said school officials were evaluating the classes like they were the school system's advanced placement classes, which do receive an extra weight. "We've just not had many of these situations prior to this year and the board will have to decide what their policy is," he said. The situation has created a furor between parents who have students enrolled in the Academy and the board. The parents believe their children are being punished by taking harder classes and not receiving extra credit for it. During Tuesday night's board meeting, officials from West Georgia attended and answered questions about the academy. The relatively new program has more than 60 students. Some live on campus in a special dorm and are jointly enrolled at the college and in high school. West Georgia's Susan Colgate, who works with the academy program, strongly believes students should receive an extra weight for taking college level classes. She said that school systems across the state are just starting to grapple with the problem, and some have chosen to give extra importance to the classes. Board member Smith Pass, who chairs the board's Curriculum Committee, announced the committee will meet next Wednesday at 5 p.m. to discuss the matter and try and hammer out a policy on the issue.
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