<p>Has anyone here ever gone to their district's school board meetings?</p>
<p>Some of my friends and I are fed up with our district and are trying to find any possible avenue to make a change on. Good idea or not?</p>
<p>We went to the school board meeting where they took our magnet status and IB program away. There were a good 3-4 dozen of us that took an unexcused absence to go. We held signs up and protested but it did no good. Our school board is incompetent.</p>
<p>Rant over - I definitely think if you can put a voice in its a good idea. What in particular are you guys upset about?</p>
<p>Our honors program is horrific. I've dealt with it for too long.</p>
<p>It's open enrollment. It's getting to the point where there are more students in honors classes than normal ones. How am I suppose to get the challenge I want when we have too many students? </p>
<p>I want to propose the idea that they institute a system of applications and teacher recomendations. I've checked with a few of my honors teachers on this and they like the idea. </p>
<p>Also, read the Abscene Administrators post by Journalismbuddah. We both attend the same school. It's just the icing on the cake here. </p>
<p>There's so much that honors are only a small bit of a bigger problem.
It's the "I can't see the forest because of the trees" problem.</p>
<p>Just have a standardized test.</p>
<p>^ I don't totally agree with standardized testing (or GPA's) for honor's program admissions at the high school level, plus my school would never go for it. They don't give the freshman the state standardized test each year that's supposedly "required" becuase we don't have the money.</p>
<p>The way we determine who goes into honors is just through teacher recommendations. It seems to work pretty well...all the kids in honors seem competent enough to be there.</p>
<p>Just saying it works.</p>
<p>And a few years ago my school district was thinking of first making high school a six-period day and then, when that failed, converting to trimesters (with a five period day...). For both (we were against both), students attended the school board meetings at which the issue was being discussed...it worked for us, we're still on semesters with seven period days.</p>
<p>Good to know. :)</p>
<p>I think for our program I'm looking for something a little more stringent because teachers for the most part here are about willing to give a poitive recomendation to anyone. I want apps because you automatically will filter out at least some of the overly lazy students.</p>
<p>^The app thing is true. The thing is, I go to a school where I've literally had to fight to be in honors and APs. I think teachers here are perhaps even a bit overly cautious about who they recommend for what.</p>
<p>I recall my Honors Freshmen English teacher...she had a five part list of criteria, all of which you had to match to get her recommendation. It was slightly ridiculous.</p>
<p>^ Oh and I don't want anything to that point. I just want it to take a little more work than checking "honors" on your course list sheet, or having mommy or daddy call in and switch students.</p>
<p>^No, my teacher was insane. She refused to recommend me because I have an anxiety disorder which hinders my ability to participate in class, and participation was one of the components of her screening system. Also, her class was infinitely harder than Honors American Lit (the next class on the honors English track). She graded like the AP Lang I had junior year and the AP Lit teacher I have this year. Crazy.</p>
<p>if random kids are in honors classes, can they handle the work load? in my school its easy to sign up for honors or AP, but the work load is intense enough that people just drop the class if it isnt for them</p>
<p>Yes, they can handle it because our honors programs are horrendous.</p>
<p>The only thing that differentiates normal and honors English is a supplement reading list, which is yet another thing I want to change. For our core classes (History, English, Science) there is a district assigned final. They don't even make a harder one for the honors classes, so we have to follow the same basic track. It's boardlining offending to my intelligence really.</p>
<p>wow, that sounds pretty bad...the main problem with some of our honors and APs is that our school makes them too hard. APUSH and AP bio are actually ridiculous at my school. and the way scheduling works its hard to take more than 3 or 4 APs per year...</p>
<p>Oh, for AP Bio here our teachers willingly admit they probably couldn't get a 5, or maybe even a 4. </p>
<p>I'm screwed. </p>
<p>No one passed the AP Bio test last year. </p>
<p>My grades are actually higher in honors than in non-honors.</p>
<p>That's horrible. Yeah, you should present those problems to the school board. Hopefully it will work.</p>
<p>I'm hoping. I'm sending in one of my friends who's helping and annoyed with it all too, to the next meeting, (I can't attend due to a band concert I have to participate in.) to figure out how our's is set up and how we can get our things on the bracket. The next meeting we will all go and do something.</p>