Changes regarding the ranking and honor status of top seniors have been approved for the 2023-24 school handbook in a special Watson Chapel School District board meeting Thursday evening.
High school principal Henry Webb and counselor Lois Chambless presented the addenda to the school board, which approved them unanimously.
The first change clarifies which students may be invited to the Top Twenty Banquet. To qualify, a student now must be ranked in the top 20 of his or her 11th- or 12th-grade class, and the ranking will be based on the weighted cumulative grade-point average through the fall semester of the current school year.
The previous requirements for the banquet read: “Student must be valedictorian or salutatorian, or be an honor graduate, a student must meet the Smart Core graduation requirements and have taken at least one (1) AP/Honors course per year in 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th grade or (2) successfully completed at least four (4) AP/Honors courses prior to graduation for academic honors.”
The second change updates requirements for becoming an honor graduate. Students must obtain a cumulative GPA of 3.5 or higher, meet the Smart Core graduation requirements and have taken at least three AP/Honors courses prior to graduation.
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Previously, an honor graduate was required to take at least one AP/Honors course per year in grades 9-12 or successfully complete at least four AP/Honors courses prior to graduation, in addition to the 3.5 GPA and Smart Core requirements.
Webb and Chambless explained the changes were necessary due to the scheduling errors the high school experienced at the beginning of the school year, as some students were not able to take a fourth AP/Honors course as previously required. One AP English class, for example, filled up quickly before other students could enroll in it.
“We have several AP courses available,” Webb said. “Those courses have really not changed as far as AP courses, your science, your English, your social studies. All of those are still available.”
When Superintendent Tom Wilson asked how the matter would be rectified, Webb said the changes will be permanent additions to the handbook.
Salary schedule unfrozen
Board members approved Wilson’s recommendations to unfreeze the certified employees’ salary schedule to include step increases and raises only for those who qualify, and to unfreeze the classified employees’ salary schedule to hire two interventionists at grade 12, level 2, of the schedule.
Wilson then recommended re-freezing the classified employees’ schedule until a new one could be developed, and the board approved unanimously.
“We discussed it last year, and it’s hard to come up with one that’s going to fit everything,” Wilson said. “We’re just going to have to look at that during this year.”
Classified employees received a 7.28% pay increase for this school year following a June board meeting.
Certified employees are now paid a minimum salary of $50,000 per year under the state LEARNS Act, signed into law in March 2023.
Personnel moves
The district accepted letters of resignation from sixth-grade teacher Selena Branch, speech pathologist Donna Brown, art teacher Belinda Lawson, Edgewood Elementary School nurse Tiffany Manning and Edgewood special education teacher Kcristii Prescott.
High school math teacher Yolonda Bush will retire.