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The Forum:

The day her school betrayed her

To the Editor on June 13:

As a parent of a student who was affected negatively by a poor decision made by the Watkins Glen School District Administration, I would like to express my thoughts and concerns.

After my daughter attended the Watkins Glen School District for 13 years, it went from fairly good to politically disgusting in one day! I understand someone made a mistake, but what is wrong with being accountable and to acknowledge your mistake? This is what we teach our children: to be accountable for their actions. It’s okay to make a mistake as long as you can be liable for it in the end.

The decision to begin using a new reporting system in the Fall was made by someone in Administration, with no communication to students/parents that this change was made, and then in May, during exams and in a time when the students are supposed to be celebrating their senior year and finishing up their high school years, they dropped the bomb, pulled them all into a meeting to inform them that the rankings had changed -- and, might I add, dramatically for some.

This meeting was not communicated to parents and should have been, knowing that 3 or 4 students were going to be affected negatively. Did you NOT think that these kids were going to be extremely disturbed by this news? These are students whose work ethics are beyond what you can even imagine. These kids needed a family member to be there for them and support them, not a dismissive meeting and call it good.

Let me summarize. They made the decision to use a new reporting system in Fall 2012 -- and then on May 22, 2013, went back to the old system of ranking class members. In the meeting, the students were provided with a letter from the principal and a piece of scrap paper folded up with their name on it, and inside their new ranking was indicated. My daughter had dropped 8 positions!

Now, one might wonder how this could possibly happen, to drop 8 positions from using a different system. The old system is based on how many courses you take, the level of difficulty and your scores, plus you get honor points for the difficulty of each course. The new system is based on, from my vague understanding, raw scores and course difficulty. I’m not saying that one system is better than the other, but when I was shown the process in which this old system has been done for the past 10-plus years, I was floored!

When I asked how these rankings were determined and what criteria were used to get the ranking, I was shown a small piece of paper that evidently was the “key” indicating how many honor points one gets for each level 1-5 course. I asked to see a copy of my daughter’s ranking details and was handed a legal sized piece of paper with handwritten scores, points, etc., for each course she had taken throughout her 4 years of high school, with some scribbles and calculations at the bottom. I never received a clear, simple answer to my question.

Now, the last I checked we were in the 21st century. I do remember the days when accounting was done on graph journals; however, it’s been several years now that we have had access to more accurate and time-saving computer programs. This process should have been reviewed many years ago; if so, we might have avoided this manipulation of honors.

Sadly -- despite the fact that what has happened is clearly wrong (and leads observers to possibly unkind speculation as to the why) -- no one in authority had the nerve to stand up and say “NO, we have already made the decision to use the new system, we cannot go back now." Nor did anyone take into account that we had already communicated with colleges and sent information to them indicating the yearlong, new-system rankings. As far as my daughter was concerned, she thought her ranking was in an old system, since she was never told they were using a new system, nor were the parents.

In my opinion, the ranking system should be taken out of the schools. After all, many colleges are not looking for where a student is ranked in their class; they will focus on the courses taken, the grades received, SAT/ACT scores, as well as other important factors, i.e. recommendation letters, experiences/jobs in their intended major, etc. The colleges realize the ranking system is by far not how they find their best students. Throughout the years, they have recognized the tremendous differences in determining these ranks. It’s not important from a college standpoint anymore, so what’s the purpose of keeping this in the schools?

There is more that I could elaborate on, but my letter would turn into a book, so I’ll wrap it up.

My main purpose for writing this letter is to express my disappointment in our school administration. There is no turning back at this point. However, if the Administration wants to regain the respect of many community members and parents, they will acknowledge their mistake publicly. I don’t have much faith that they have the backbone to do this. It’s time to fess up before the hole they have already dug gets deeper.

Secondly and most importantly, as parents we must fight for our children, stand up for them, take care of them and love them. For the sake of our future students, let’s make sure that our school is being managed right.

We, as a family, will move on from this, and this incident will not affect us in any way in the future, nor will it affect my daughter’s educational career. It will however, be something my daughter never forgets -- and sadly enough she will always remember the day her school betrayed her.

Sue Bishop