Highlands High School principal, John Darnell, prompted a change to how seniors take exams. Originally, only seniors who were failing were required to take final exams while everyone else was automatically exempt from finals.
However, this year, Darnell put out the notion that seniors should also be required to take exams if they have more than six absences.
The idea came about during a faculty meeting on January 17th, where Darnell was met with strife from several teachers including math teacher, Mrs. Carelock and English teacher Mrs. Nash.
A big issue that was brought up during the meeting was the fact that nowhere in the student handbook does it say that seniors need to take exams. It says nothing about exams in regards to seniors, only grades 9-11.
After COVID-19, seniors took attendance much more nonchalantly so the goal was to try and incentivize seniors to come to school. The problem with this decision was that it came about halfway through the year and most students already had a bundle of absences.
The other goal was to provide seniors with another “exam experience” to adequately prepare for college. The caveat, however, is that seniors have already had at least 12 exams throughout middle and high school.
Also, seniors who are doing well aren’t going to give a full-faith effort because it doesn’t matter to them as much as an exam from any other year.
Seniors were not finding this sudden change to be fair, especially not senior Alex Robertson.
“I really didn’t like it and thought it was completely unfair, I’m happy they changed their mind.”
Many seniors are very happy about this change, but next year’s juniors will have to be prepared for finals as the new policy goes into effect at the start of next year.