By Deemah Pulak

In efforts to further strengthen and improve the performance of students and teachers at school, the district has implemented a new type of grading policy and attendance policy for students. The old six six-week grading periods have been replaced by four nine-week grading periods. The district has also started to measure attendance by counting the number of hours a student is present instead of days.

The policy has already been implemented in several districts around the area. Central office personnel from those districts came to speak to RISD members about the system’s features.

“We’re just a late bloomer,” Principal Charles Bruner said. “We’ve been a conservative district. The fact that we want to see things work before we jump in doesn’t surprise me.”

Some students are worried about how this grading system will negatively affect their grades.

“I think that the new grading period is going to be difficult on everyone,” sophomore Monisa Gatur said. “It means more time to turn things in which means more time for your grade to drop.”

Bruner said the nine-week grading period has the ability to benefit both students and teachers.

“The positive end of a nine-week grading period would be that you have more time to get your work in,” Bruner said. “You have more time to take more tests to bring up your GPA. It just becomes an opportunity for both the teacher and student to be more successful in their endeavors.”

However, Bruner also acknowledges that the new nine week grading period can bring adverse effects.

“It would hurt students who turned everything in late,” Bruner said. “It would also hurt a student if a teacher held grades and did not get them in the gradebook, and I know that sometimes that’s a problem already. We’ll need to do a better job of getting grades in the gradebook on time.”

State legislature is requiring that attendance will not be counted by the number of days students attend school, but a set number of seat hours. Students now have to attend 75,600 seat hours in a school year.

“It allows us to pick up time at the back end of the school year,” Bruner said. “It’s a good thing because it gives us more time to do things. There’s a bunch of policies and practices that we have to go over and now we have more time to go over them.”