By Jodi Wolfe
Staff Writer

Parents of students at Armand R. Dupont School addressed the Allenstown School Board on a recent change in qualifications for the honor roll system.

Last year, the grading system was 93 to 100 for an A, 83 to 92 for a B, and 73 to 82 for a C. High honor roll was all A’s with one B and honor roll was all B’s with one C. Citizenship was on a scale of 1 to 3. Students were placed on a separate citizenship honor roll if they had all 1s and with one 2 allowed.

This year, honor roll has less stringent grade requirements, but also includes the behavior scale.

Now, students with grades 90 to 100 make the high honor roll and students with grades 80 to 89 make the honor roll. Two scales measure behavior. One category is for attitude/behavior and and the other is for effort. Both are based on a scale of 1 to 5. Only students with 1s and 2s are eligible for the honor roll, said Dupont School Principal Betsey Cox Stebbins.

“We were pushing them for extra effort,” Stebbins said. A new principal’s list is also part of the honor roll for students with 1s and 2s.

Parents were unaware of the change in the system until they received their children’s first-quarter report cards in November with a letter explaining the new system, said Debbie Lee, whose son is in eighth grade. Until parents received the report cards, they assumed attitude/behavior and effort were separate categories, she said.

“The kids, like the parents, just assumed it was a separate category like before,” she said. “(It) sends a mixed message.”

At the Dec. 9 school board meeting, Lee read a letter to the school board describing how her son was left off the honor roll this year because of his effort grade, and attitude/behavior grades were lower because he is quiet in class. She felt that those grades should not be counted against students if they have the academic grades to make the high honor and honor roll.

“As long as you make the grades, that’s what’s important to me,” Lee said she told her son when she saw he hadn’t made the honor roll.

Stebbins said that the purpose of the honor roll is to give something for students to strive for. Last year, more than half the students were on the honor roll and it was no longer a challenge.

“That’s too many kids on the honor roll,” she said.

Under the new system, not quite 30 percent of the students made the honor roll, said Stebbins.

School Board Chairman Louis Conley told the parents that the school board will reinstate last year’s honor roll policy for first-quarter grades and then revise the current policy at the next school board meeting on Thursday, Jan. 13. The board will also determine what the requirements will be for each letter grade.

In reinstating last year’s honor roll system, Stebbins will revise this year’s honor roll and add students who would have made it on last year’s system, but didn’t with this year’s. She assured the parents that she would not remove any students who didn’t make it based on last year’s system, but made it with this year’s system.

Lee said she would like attitude/behavior and effort to be separate from academics as they were in the past.