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School board changes policy, considers transfer appeals
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By Jessica Rush, jrush@acnpapers.com
A special meeting of the Board of Trustees for Frisco ISD, held Tuesday, had a brief but important agenda. Officials passed a change in the board’s academic achievement and class ranking policy and heard appeals for general public transfer requests.
The policy change will mean courses taken for high school credit while in middle school will count toward the student’s high school grade point average (GPA), beginning with this year’s incoming sixth graders. In the past, although a student would be taking high school level courses, their grades would not be counted in the GPA and instead would only be applied as credit for taking the course.
The board reviewed the policy after a concerned parent spoke up at the Aug. 9 regular meeting. The mother has twins going into eighth grade, and she was worried about the policy that changed this past spring. Her children have already taken classes for high school credit, but they were not told they would count toward their GPA until after the board approved the change.
“When they looked and reviewed the policy, they realized the policy didn’t convey what we had been communicating,” Wortham said.
The original policy would have affected eighth graders this year, but the board decided to change the policy and re-approve it.
“Upon further reflection and talking with campus people, the best thing would be to start it with this year’s sixth graders,” Wortham said.
Teachers will now be able to convey ahead of time to their students if their grade is going to count, but the district’s administrators hope that students would apply themselves whether their grade counted in the long run or not.
Wortham added that students may approach a class differently if they knew it would count toward their high school GPA.
“In some cases, it may cause some students to want to take those courses [now] or wait until high school until they’re better prepared,” Wortham said.
The other part of the special meeting was dedicated to hearing transfer appeals for students who requested to transfer to another school outside of their zone but were denied based on the district’s guidelines. This year there were 618 general public transfer requests, and 88 were denied. Out of those 88, only 12 requested the chance to take advantage of the appeals process at the special meeting.
Students in kindergarten through eighth grade may request a transfer for several reasons, for example, if another school is more convenient to their parent’s work or child care, or if the family moved, but the child wished to remain at a school with their friends. The most common reason for a denial is if the student is attempting to transfer to a campus projected at 90 percent or greater capacity.
“They’re typically denied based on our guidelines,” said Doug Zambiasi, assistant superintendent for administrative services. “Each appeal is looked at on an individual basis by the school board, and they’re the only ones who can really determine … whether or not to approve it whether or not it’s been denied by me. I give the board a lot of credit for really listening and trying to stay within the guidelines but at the same time look at each one individually.”
The district typically denies the vast majority of high school transfer requests because of the diverse and specialized staff allocated at each campus, building capacities and UIL considerations.
“If we let [high school] students transfer all over the place, we wouldn’t know how to staff those special programs,” Zambiasi said. “We could certainly end up with one high school over capacity and one under.”
Frisco ISD does not have “choice of school,” which gives parents and students the opportunity to select a school within the district that they would like to attend. Zambiasi said the decision was made after the second high school opened, and a committee recommended to the school board that students continue to attend the schools inside their zone.
“I think the reason for that is that we wanted to have great kids and great programs at all of our campuses,” Zambiasi said. “We wanted all of our campuses to be competitive athletically, academically and in fine arts.”
To see a list of all of the district’s transfer guidelines, visit http://www.friscoisd.org/departments/AdministrativeServices/studentTransfers.htm.
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