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BY MICHAEL OLOHAN
OF NORTHERN VALLEY PRESS
DEMAREST, NEW JERSEY —— Beginning next year, the Northern Valley Regional High School District will add 0.25 in weight to grade-point averages for students taking a college-prep enriched course as well as advanced-placement courses, said Superintendent James Santana.
Following a long and emotional school board meeting last September with students and parents requesting – and at times demanding – more grade-point average weight for college-prep enriched courses, the board declined to add any extra weight for such courses.
Many parents contended then that the CPE courses should carry extra grade-point average weight because they were more rigorous than the normal college-prep courses.
Two parents filed a lawsuit against the district – later withdrawn – to have CPE grades changed retroactively from the 2014-2015 school year.
Santana said he recommended adding an extra 0.25 grade-point average weighting for CPE courses and AP courses after many meetings with an ad hoc committee focused on the issue. He said over time it became clear that there was a difference in rigor between a college-prep and a college-prep enriched course.
In addition, Advanced Placement courses will receive a 0.25 weight increase, reflecting the fact that other high schools give AP classes more weight than Honors classes, Santana told an online news source. This adjustment keeps AP courses a full point above CPE courses, he said.
The original lawsuit filed by two parents last year requested CPE courses be designated on student transcripts and 0.50 weighting be added for extra GPA credit.
Previously, so-called enriched college-prep courses were not recognized on NVRHS transcripts, but Santana said last September that the difference between CPE courses and college-prep was pace of instruction, depth of material, and level of independent learning required.
“In a perfect world, these levels (CP and CPE) will be eliminated. The ideal situation would be to eliminate these two levels and just differentiate instruction,” he said last September.
Efforts to reach Santana by phone and email for comment were not returned by press time.
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