Starting with the 2012-2013 8th graders, juniors and seniors will be required to take a full 7-period schedule and the number of quality points for Advanced Placement classes will increase from eight points to 10.
Both of these changes passed with a 7-0 vote at the Oct. 1 RISD school board meeting.
Currently, high school seniors like Aiden Abebe are only required to take five classes. Abebe spends her extra time working on her application to the University of Texas, trying to make a dent in the mountain of homework that comes from her three AP classes, and catching up on sleep.
“I don’t think it’s fair to require seniors to take a full schedule,” she said. “Seniors already have so much on their plate and having to take a full day of classes just adds more stress and lessens the amount of time you have for other things like college apps.”
School board member Kris Oliver said that there would be individual exceptions made so that seniors could only have six classes with parent and administrative approval.
“I am convinced that implementing this proposal is the right thing to do,” Oliver, the father of a Richardson High School senior, said. “But now the onus is on us to offer courses to seniors that will benefit them such as ACT/SAT prep classes.”
Senior Sophia Kollaja said that she doesn’t think students should be forced to take classes if they don’t need the credit to graduate.
“I know that I only have four real classes and if I was forced to fill up all seven periods, it would be really annoying,” she said.
School board member Kim Caston addressed the issue by quoting a poster she once saw in Parkhill junior high: “What is fair isn’t always easy and what is easy isn’t always fair.”
“This is the right thing to do for our students, even if it isn’t popular with them,” Caston said.
The quality point increase is due to the rigor of the AP classes and to encourage students to take harder classes.
“I think that the increase in quality points might be a bit too much,” Kollaja, who has received only eight points for all of her AP classes, said. “While it may influence more students to take AP classes, I think that such a strong jump in a grade boost seems slightly unfair.
Pre-AP quality points will remain at five points.
