2023-11-02 21:32:32
Unraveling the grade change controversy: New plan to clarify North Carolina’s education laws in motion
by Rebecca McGann
Thursday, Nov 2nd 2023
Unraveling the grade change controversy: New plan to clarify North Carolina’s education laws in motion
We’re continuing to investigate the laws and regulations that landed New Bern High School in the hot seat last month which led to the football team forfeiting their 2022 games including the state championship.
As a quick reminder, in early October, New Bern High School forfeited its state football title due to having ineligible players. This prompted former principal Jerry Simmons to speak up and confirm he had been changing grades. We’ve been researching the statutes and policies that are currently in place since then.
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On Thursday, the North Carolina State Board of Education held a meeting in Greenville. We went there to see if we might find some clarity on the state statutes governing the changing of grades. Our questions were referred to the Board’s legal counsel.
So we turned to the legislature and Representative Steve Tyson, who has been looking into the issue, “To the people that analyze the laws, it’s clear to them, but to the layperson that doesn’t deal with that every day, there’s obviously some clarity that needs to be made.”
The policy analysts at the North Carolina General Assembly say the statute outlining the powers and duties of a principal does not explicitly allow them to change class grades, and that decision would be up to the local school boards. When we reached out to Craven County schools regarding this, they denied an interview and said that the statute overrules any policies they make. We also reached out to Carteret County schools, and their response was similar- pointing us to policy 3420, which outlines students moving up grade levels.
We looked at multiple counties’ policy manuals, and they all say the same thing, some word for word. In no policy did I find it written out that a principal might not change grades, but I also didn’t find it written out that they might.
Representative Steve Tyson plans to change the state statute once he gets back to Raleigh- to reword and make it clear that principals do not have the power to change grades, and cannot force someone else to do it for them, “I’ve already talked to the chairman of the K-12 committee in the house, and I walked him through that, and he agrees, but we’re gonna have to get back up to Raleigh. Assuming that it can actually be made into law, then we will make sure that it is distributed to all the public school boards, as well as the department of instruction.”
This is still in the very beginning stages: the rewording of that statute still needs to be introduced, get through committee, through the house floor and through the Senate before it lands on Governor Cooper’s desk, but we’ll be sure to follow it’s progress.
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