Elizabethton board approves first reading of district goals and honor-roll policies

The Elizabethton Board of Education at its July meeting approved first reading of two board policies: Policy 1.7, School District Goals, and Policy 4.602, Honor Roll Awards and Class Ranking.

Director Van Hesse said the School District Goals policy will have one paragraph removed to reflect recent changes in state law affecting educator diversity, adding that “there was some language that we needed to clean up there based on some, some changes in state law.”

The board also debated changes to honor-roll and class-ranking procedures. Director Van Hesse explained the district had tried to account for weighted courses taken in a senior’s final semester but that the student information system, Skyward, “has a hard time doing that because it's in the middle of a term.” He described the practical difficulty as requiring staff to “trick the system” to generate a final grade midterm and said the district is reverting to using grades at the end of the first semester of a student’s senior year to determine honors.

Van Hesse said the district previously attempted an approach that would include the first three quarters of the senior year but concluded it was not equitable across cases because of university courses and other timing issues. He told the board that once final grades are run at the end of the school year, any changes in ranking will be reflected, but the district needs an earlier cutoff to hold honors events.

Board members asked clarifying questions during the discussion; no amendments to the language were recorded during first reading. The board approved the motion for first reading by voice vote; meeting minutes show an affirmative vote with no opposing votes.

The policies will return for further consideration at a later meeting as part of the board’s policy-adoption process.