School Issues Newsletter #71: Budget, Facilities, Class Rankings

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School Issues Newsletter #71: Budget, Facilities, Class Rankings
Date: 02/27/2002 11:31:58 AM Eastern Standard Time
From: jklagge@bev.net
To: jklagge@bev.net

Dear Friends,

Several recent issues before the school board are worth elaborating:
-Budget: Our school budget request has been forwarded to the Board of Supervisors. It will be "presented" and defended by the school board at their meeting on Monday, March 4th. There will be time for public address at that meeting, at which you can express your views on the budget.

The BoS meets at 7pm in the County Courthouse and Administrative Building in the center of Christiansburg, on the 3rd floor.

Correction: I'm afraid I misinformed you concerning the public address at the Board of Supervisor's meeting on Monday, March 4th. There will NOT be a public address time at that meeting, because it is a specially called work session. They do have public address at all their regularly scheduled meetings, which are the 2nd and 4th Monday of each month, at 7:15pm. Also, there will be a specially called public hearing on the county budget and tax rate, Wednesday, April 3rd at 7pm at Blacksburg Middle School. I urge you to attend that hearing, as it is specifically for the purpose of hearing from the public--and it is usually well-attended by those who are unhappy about taxes. Also you can still, of course, contact your supervisor by e-mail. While we are on the subject of the Board of Supervisors--though they are still holding their meetings in the County Courthouse, they will be moving soon to the new County Government Center at 7455 Roanoke St. in Christiansburg. But I'm not sure when "soon" is. I think in April or May. -Jim Klagge.

To contact your supervisor by e-mail, send to:
Annette Perkins, District A: aperkins@naxs.net
Nick Rush, District B: nrush@naxs.com
Jim Politis, District D: bcbuffalo@aol.com
Mary Biggs, Chair and District F: mbiggs@naxs.com
Chuck Shorter, District E: cshorter@vt.edu, or cpshorter@naxs.net
John Muffo, District G: jmuffo@vt.edu
Gary Creed, District C: garycreed@naxs.net
County Administrator Jeff Johnson: jdjohnson@naxs.com

Of course much of the budget pinch comes from Richmond this year. If you want to contact state legislators by e-mail, send to:
Delegate David Nutter: del_Nutter@house.state.va.us or dnutter@vt.edu
Delegate Jim Shuler: del_Shuler@house.state.va.us or deljshuler@aol.com
Delegate Morgan Griffith: del_Morgan@house.state.us or lawleg@aol.com
Senator Madison Marye: 39@sov.state.va.us or marye4va@swva.net

-Facilities Use: In my last newsletter I described the process being used to consider ideas for a number of facilities:
Bethel Elementary, Shawsville Middle old building, BMS soon-to-be-old building, CMS soon-to-be-old building, Elliston Lafayette Elementary, and Price's Fork Elementary. There will be a second community dialogue meeting Thursday, March 7, 7-9:30pm, at CHS. There are directions, arrangements for transportation and child care, all described on the MCPS web site, at www.mcps.org/admin/facilities/dialog.html. All interested citizens are urged to attend. I want to especially make the point that we do not just want people who have ideas to come to this meeting. In fact much of what is needed is broad-based community input about a number of ideas. So even if you haven't thought much about this, we need to know your reactions to ideas. (A lot of work has been put into laying out ideas so you can evaluate them.) Otherwise all we get are the reactions of people who already know what they want. And while that is helpful to us, it is only a small segment of the general population.

-Class Rankings: The school board is considering some changes to the policy for determining class rank in high schools. The issues mostly concern students who earn all A's in their HS-level classes. You'd think they'd all be tied for 1st rank with a 4.0 GPA, but it's not that simple. AP classes, and some other classes that qualify for college level credit, are given "weighted" credit, so that an A is worth 5, a B is worth 4, etc. Thus it is possible to get higher than a 4.0 GPA. When a student has above a 4.0, it turns out to be "harmful" to their GPA to "merely" get an A in a non-weighted class. You might think all students take the same number of classes, but that's not quite so.

Some students, for example, take a class--maybe band--during their lunch period, because they like band and eat fast. Thus, some students, intentionally or not, take fewer non-weighted classes than others. This also pertains to HS level classes taken in middle school (Algebra, geometry, foreign languages). A student may, at the conclusion of the course, elect to NOT have these class grades count toward their HS GPA later on. But otherwise they will count, and "pull down" a GPA that is 4+. Here is an illustration: Student A takes 28 regular classes and 4 AP classes, getting A's in all of them. This student will have a 4.1250 GPA [(28x4 + 4x5)/32 = 4.1250]. Student B takes 30 regular classes and 4 AP classes, getting all A's in them. This student will have a 4.1176 GPA [(30x4 + 4x5)/34 = 4.1176].

Thus student A has a higher class rank, while putting out less effort than student B (who, perhaps, took band during lunch 2 years). (Or, perhaps, student A's parents asked to not have 2 HS classes taken in middle school count toward the HS GPA--in which case they put out the same effort, but simply had parents who acted differently.) Intuitively this seems unfair. A committee of administrators, counselors, teachers and parents from the 4 HS's has been looking at this issue, and made a recommendation to the board: namely, that "if all final grades are equal, and the number of weighted courses completed is equal, no student shall be penalized in the computation of class rank for completing more classes than other students." If you have an active imagination you know that this may not take care of all possible scenarios--but it is a start.

The SB will probably adopt this at our next meeting to fix the unfairness in the short-run, at least in most cases. In the long run, it seems that perhaps student B should get the higher class-rank. This could be accomplished by breaking ties created by the short-run fix using total quality points accumulated. But to do that at this point might seem unfair to student A, who was operating with an understanding of the rules as they were established at the time. It might seem unfair to change the rules to A's disadvantage retroactively, so to speak. The short-term fix is like the Olympics' decision to award 2 gold medals in pair's figure skating. B is promoted in rank, but A is not demoted. This "holds harmless" the policy for those now in high school. But the SB may adopt the tie-breaking method starting with those who will graduate 4 years from now.

There has also been talk--this is at the other end of the spectrum--about getting rid of the categories of valedictorian and salutatorian altogether. Perhaps to be replaced by categories such as "Highest Honors", "High Honors", and "Honors". Class rank would still be retained for college purposes, but not be used so precisely for honorary purposes at graduation. This is just at the talking stage, and no proposals have yet been made.

Let me know if you have any comments,
Jim Klagge
District F Representative
Montgomery County School Board.

email: admin@gisone.com