New Year New Rules

New Year, New Rules

By: Emerald Young

In the previous year the only eligibility policy that Chaparral High School  had was the one that the Kansas State High School Activities Association (KSHSAA) had in place. Their policy is every student had to pass five new subjects every semester to be able to participate in activities and athletics for the next semester. A lot of schools have something stricter  than this in place but CHS didn't. Well that is until this year. In this new school year there is a weekly eligibility policy.

The reason for this change in policy is that many students would let their grades go down until the end of the semester, causing them to fail classes that whole semester. At the last minute students would try to get their grade up so they could pass the class and stay eligible for the next semester of school. That strategy was difficult to do, so those students would end up failing the class and not earn the credits they need to graduate. As a result, students had to take online classes so they could gain the credits they missed because of failing classes. Having weekly eligibility makes all the students accountable to be passing all of their classes every week instead of each semester to participate in activities and athletic events.

The eligibility policy is one of the reasons why we now have an activity period, but it is not the only reason. This year CHS does not have a Zero Hour. In the past years, zero hour was a time at the beginning of the day so students who were failing could meet up with their teachers and get the help they needed. The problem with zero hour being in the morning was that a lot of students slept in and didn't come to school earlier to use this opportunity to raise their grade. This year the activity period is in between 3rd and 4th hour. This way everyone is already at school and can now use the time to meet up with teachers and catch up on missing or failing grades. Students who are not behind in any classes are able to use the activity period to go to meetings for clubs they are in at Chaparral.

A student becomes ineligible when they are failing a class or classes. Then stay ineligible for one whole week, Sunday through Saturday. Grades are checked each and every Thursday. If the student is not failing the class that caused them to be ineligible, they are eligible the following Sunday. If that student is still failing the class that caused he or she to be ineligible, they stay ineligible until that grade raises to passing in that class. Time will tell if this new eligibility policy will work out better than the one from last year. The first time for any change in any kind of policy is difficult as the students adjust to the change. It might take a few years or so to really see if this policy is working or not.