While the administration has made significant improvements to the waiver system by accepting students with prerequisites first, the lack of communication about the method for processing waivers has left the student body and counselors uninformed, causing an increased amount of make-up work for those who were waived into classes after they had already settled into their schedule.
According to Vice Principal Ian Drummound, in past years, the guidance counselors would process the waivers as soon as they were submitted and continue calculating them over the summer with the goal of having all reasonable requests incorporated into the students’ schedules. This year, Drummond decided to change the process so that the waivers were not looked at until the first week of school. There is a valid reason for this change, as it was implemented in order to give students who did not need to waive in to classes priority over wavier students.
After a conflict last year in which students who met the prerequisites for Advanced Placement Biology were not able to take the class because there was a lack of space, while students who had waived into the class were admitted, Drummond offically decided that the process must be reevaluated. This caused problems when students still did not have definitive schedules on the first day of school .
According to AP Biology teacher Daniel Sponaugle, students admitted late began with a disadvantage, as they had missed a portion of information. Being put into desired courses a week or two later forces the student to not only have a lot of make-up work, but also gives them no chance to adjust to the new material.
According to Costa guidance counselor Jennifer Wildenberg, the counselors had no involvement in the waiver process. According to Drummond, he sent out an email at the end of the 2013-14 school year explaining the new process to the counselors, but admits that he never followed up on it, and did nothing further to ensure they knew about the changed procedure. While Drummond’s acceptance of his mistake is commendable, his lack of communication meant counselors only notified students if they were admitted to their desired classes, and had no explanation for those denied.
According to Wildenberg, this year’s waivers were sent to Drummond and then directed to the department heads, who decided which students were admitted based on the amount of space available in each class. Because the heads of each department do not know about individual students’ academic history, the counselors, who are aware of the students’ previous academic history, should have more input on whether students should be able to take advanced classes.
Students who have the prerequisites for classes should have priority over students who want to waive into more advanced courses, and this change in the system works to accommodate this. However, this change in waiver policy must more effectively provide waiver students the opportunity to enroll in more rigorus classes.
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