WHO WE ARE AND WHAT WE ARE SEEKING

We are parents, students, citizens, and other concerned individuals, either living, studying, or working in the Acton-Boxborough Regional School District (AB Regional School District).   We hereby petition the AB Regional School District, Superintendent Peter Light, High School Principal Larry Dorey, and the AB Regional School Committee to adopt a pass-no pass grading policy for the current, spring semester of 2020, for all secondary school students in our district.

BACKGROUND

After approximately six of the nine weeks of the third quarter of the school year were completed, the AB Regional School District abruptly, and understandably, closed school on account of the coronavirus crisis.  The initial closure was for two weeks, but soon the Commonwealth of Massachusetts followed suit and shut down schools statewide.  The latest, and current order, from Governor Baker, is for schools in Massachusetts to be closed through May 4, 2020; however, it is widely expected that school will be closed beyond that date, and in fact for the rest of this school year.

Initially, upon the district's school closure, a letter was sent to the high school community to inform that a pass-no pass grading policy would be implemented. That was a great relief to many students and parents, who were anxiously struggling to adapt to the unprecedented need to quickly shift to working and studying from home, without any prior warning of what was about to happen. But then, the district administration walked back that initial announcement, and it is now unclear what the grading policy will actually be, especially for the third quarter, for which only the first six weeks have been conducted and completed in school classrooms. We are happy that Superintendent Peter Light has acknowledged that letter grades would not be issued while classes are not being conducted in school, and throughout the current experimental period of "distance learning."  However, we are still waiting for clarification on the policy for grading to "close out the third quarter" and we ask our school district leaders to be clear, decisive, and prompt in letting all of us know what the policy is, to ease the anxiety and give us all a sense of finality and common purpose.

ADOPT A UNIVERSAL PASS-NO PASS GRADING SYSTEM FOR SPRING 2020

For many and varied reasons, which we may indicate individually in our comments below to accompany this petition, we believe it is the right move to adopt a universal pass-no pass grading policy for the grading of all secondary students, for the entire spring semester of this year.  Such a policy would be consistent with that which has already been adopted by numerous colleges and universities, here in Massachusetts and across the nation, and with what many enlightened public school districts, including the top public school district in Palo Alto, California, have also decided to do.