The school board voted unanimously yesterday to retain its controversial new policy requiring a minimum 2.0 grade-point average for students playing sports. But they expanded it to cover students involved in all extracurricular activities, except student government.
After almost five hours of testimony and discussions among board members, parents, coaches and students, the board revised its August decision to raise the minimum GPA from 1.6 to 2.0 for athletes only.
"This was never intended to be just sports," board member Maureen Carr-York said. "We said in the beginning that we wanted to include extracurricular activities. We only waited because there was some concern that we find out just how many students would be affected."
LTC The board also voted, 5-3, to allow a student to carry one failing "E" grade per eligibility period and still participate in an extracurricular activity, a reversal from the board's earlier stance of no "E" allowed. Voting against that policy were board members Thomas Twombly, Joseph Foster and JoAnn Tollenger.
The revised policy goes into effect Nov. 4, the beginning of the winter sports season.
Few were still present at 1 a.m. when the board passed the new GPA rules. However, many of the changes were in line with coaches' and students' wishes.