FHS student petition to change first semester grading scale
January 12, 2021
With the shutdown of schools, the school administration decided that only students failing their classes would have to take exams for the first semester. After this decision was made another decision had to be made, with no longer having exams for all students the grading scale could no longer be 40-40-20. Juniors Dakota Naganashe and Fiona Dunlop put together a petition to change the first-semester grade alignment from 40 percent for the first quarter and 60 percent for the second to 50 percent for both quarters.
“The reason behind the petition was to try and benefit the majority of students,” Naganashe said. “Some of the reasoning the administration gave as to why they chose a 40-60 grading scale was because quarter one took time for students to get into the hang of having to do online schooling, as well as the fact that in the second quarter teachers were able to help students make up their grade and better improve them. Switching to a 50-50 grading scale benefits most students on an average of around two to three percent boost their grade, not only will this help some students move into the next letter grade it will help the students have better grades after having a hectic second quarter having to move from face-to-face back to virtual as well as students that were contacted traced and out of school for two weeks.”
The students who organized the petition had to come up with a way to get their voices heard and get their petition out there for other students to sign.
“We currently have 95 signatures,” Naganashe said. “The bulk of our signatures was over winter break. We mainly spread the word through social media, people posting it on their social media stories bringing attention to it. We also were relying on whether or not people cared, usually if people who saw it cared, it would get posted on their social media as well. Therefore helping to spread the word even more.”
Naganashe and Dunlop had a plan to submit the petition to the administration soon, as the quarter is coming to an end. Students are hoping that the administration will see their petition with plenty of time to discuss it before the final decision is made.
“Our original plan was to go to the board meeting on Jan. 4,” Dunlop said. “Unfortunately, that meeting was delayed until the following week, so by that time we were sure that the grade plans would already be cemented. So instead, Dakota and I decided to email our petition to Mrs. Lemke and Mr. Bradley, who will hopefully take a look at it and bring it to the attention of the other members of Fenton High’s staff.”
Whether or not the petition will be approved is still up in the air, but the students are hoping their hard work will pay off and end with a 50-50 grading scale.
