by Eric Furth
Calendar Editor
As of the end of the first semester of the 2015-2016 school year, Advanced Placement classes will be weighted on student’s transcripts.
The Manhattan Beach Unified School District Board of Trustees previously voted on including weighting AP classes last May, but grades weren’t able to be successfully weighted on students’ transcripts until this year due to MBUSD’s PowerSchool lacking the 5.0 GPA scale at the beginning of the first semester.
“One of the biggest incentives for weighted grades at Costa is to allow students to have the opportunity to pursue college scholarships, and many of them are based on academic GPA.” said Costa Vice Principal Karina Gerger.
In previous years, many Costa students have been unable to obtain academic scholarships because of difficulties with weighting grades that would ordinarily allow them to be candidates `
For all Costa students, midterm grade reports have already had AP classes weighted on them. The 5.0 scale was installed a few days before first semester grades were due.
“The PowerSchool system was able to be updated to coincide with first semester transcript reports, which is going to allow for wide availability of scholarships.” Gerger said.
Because weighted grades were approved at the end of the 2014-2015 school year, Costa was intended to have weighted grades available at the beginning of the new school year to students of all grades. However, the changes weren’t able to be completed until February 15th
“Those who wanted AP classes weighted were only a handful of students that needed a certain GPA to reach for a scholarship.” Gerger said.
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