Students and parents voice protests at BRSD Administrative building

More than 100 students and parents gathered at the administrative offices of the Battle River School Division offices in Camrose today, where the Board were in attendance at their regular meeting, to hand over petitions protesting a new grading system for High School students being implemented by the Board.

Three BRSD high schools piloted the system in 2012, and the plan is to add more high schools next year, and to fully implement in all BRSD high schools by the 2014/15 term.

BRSD reports that parents can expect to see information about what students are supposed to be learning; evidence of how the student is doing on assignments, tests, projects, and overall; and descriptive feedback from the teacher than includes what the student is doing well, where they are struggling, and ideas for how the student might do better, along with one of four levels of grading: Beginning, Developing, Achieving, and Excelling.

This is not the first time parents have protested, a group parents attended a board meeting in the fall to discuss their reservations about the grading system, and in January a retired teacher and a group of students also made presentations, again bringing reservations about the new system to the board members.

Administration announced changes to the reporting practice at the beginning of April, but not in the system itself, only in the implementation date, with a statement from Superintendent Dr. Larry Payne, ““If there is a school community which I feel needs more time for staff or parents to be ready for implementation, I’m prepared to give them that. We’ll consider 2014 to be a target date.”

At Thursday morning’s rally, the board and administration broke off their board meeting to greet the students and parents. Board of Trustees Chair Doug Bowie and Assistant Superintendent, Instruction, Rick Jarrett addressed those present, but declined to specifically discuss the grading system, instead asking those interested in joining further discussion about the project to sign up, passing a number of clipboards out.

Read the full story in the April 16, 2013 Edition of The Community Press!