School officials are looking into making some changes to the graduation policy that would rid the protocol of some things that are "not fair" to some students.
There are two specific areas that Brainerd Superintendent Klint Willert said he would soon recommend to the school board to change.
Willert briefly detailed two of his observations at a Brainerd School District Curriculum Committee meeting Friday.
The first is the current policy for designating the honor status to seniors. Right now, that honor status is handed out in the first semester. It is not given in the second semester.
If a student gains honor status in the first semester, they cannot lose that status. Even if they "take the second semester off," they will still be recognized as an honor student when they graduate, Willert said.
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On the other side, if a student doesn't get the honor status in the first semester, but pushes hard and improves their standing by the second semester, they would not be recognized as an honor student at graduation.
Willert said those policies are "not fair" to students.
The second area Willert wanted to address is the policy that allows seniors to walk the graduation line before all final assessment grades are in.
Currently, the graduation ceremony is the same day as the last round of final assessments. That means teachers don't have time to grade the students' work before they walk.
"We may have instances where students walk and they haven't fulfilled graduation requirements if they've failed (an assessment)," Willert said.
A possible solution may be to have the seniors finish up a day or two before graduation to give teachers the opportunity to grade assessments.
The current Brainerd gradation policy was adopted in 1998. The one-page document falls short of the recent 11-page model recommended by The Minnesota School Boards Association.
"It's so much more comprehensive than our current policy," Willert said.
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There are three areas the new recommended policy addresses that the current one doesn't, Willert said.
Those are: state accountability testing, expectations of the the World's Best Workforce, and the process that would allow students to graduate early.
Willert will comb through the recommended policy before the next full school board meeting to make sure it aligns well with Brainerd.
He'll then present it to the board meeting, recommending a first reading to adopt the policy.
