Directors seek to add data to student rankings
By Mike McGann, Editor, The Times
EAST MARLBOROUGH — It appears the much-discussed subject of student ranking will make a return at next week’s Unionville-Chadds Ford Board of Education meeting, less than two months after the board agreed to a compromise proposal to end decile rankings of students at Unionville High School.
What remains to be seen is whether a revised plan — put forward by board director Robert Sage during Monday night’s board work session and backed by his colleague John Murphy to add reporting the school’s top grade point average as well as the number of students with GPAs above 4.5 — will garner enough support during next week’s meeting at Pocopson Elementary to further change the new policy and administrative guidelines adopted back in March.
At least four board directors — Jeff Hellrung, Carolyn Daniels, Michael Rock and Gregg Lindner — have made it clear that they will be “no” votes on the measure.
“To have these ideas come up so late, after the fact, makes a mockery of all of the public discussions that were held,” Daniels said in opposing the change.
Although Hellrung said he is not opposed to the concepts proposed, he said he feels it is appropriate for the board to stick by the compromise hammered out — and give it time to see how the process works out.
Based on the discussions Monday night, it appears the concept will have trouble getting to the five votes needed for approval. There didn’t seem to be lot of sentiment in support of revising a new standard that passed by 7-2 vote — after months of public wrangling and passion over the previous decile reporting system, one where UHS students were broken into which tenth their academic performance represented in their class.
That reporting, it was suggested, hurt the college applications of students in the second and third deciles at minimum, while proponents argued that high-achieving students deserved to enjoy the benefit of their success. After much debate, the board voted to end decile ranking and instead report a GPA distribution to provide context to colleges and universities on an individual student’s GPA.
The issue is expected to come up for a vote, next Monday.
In other district news, district officials reviewed details of the new staffing guidelines related to specific enrollment numbers as they relate to the proposed budget for 2016-17. Under the proposals, some part time time positions would go to full time, while some services currently being outsourced to the Chester County Intermediate Unit would be brought back in house. Additionally, a core teacher for Charles F. Patton Middle School would be added to ease class sizes in the building. The new standards will also like mean one less teacher at Unionville High School — a position eliminated through attrition.
The majority of additional staffing comes in special education.
Finally, district officials put the brakes on a proposal to hire an outside firm to help develop a strategic plan — DemoSophia made a formal presentation at the April work session. The board plans to discuss district goals and what the goals should be for such a strategic plan — or even the process to get community input on what those goals should be — during a board retreat sometime before the start of the 2016-17 school year.
