Students planning to take some Academic Enrichment courses at Sierra College wonder if they’ll receive the same weighted credit as students who already who took the course in years prior. This question comes due to Roseville Joint Union High School District’s decision to revoke the weighted credit from first-level Sierra courses. We appreciate RJUHSD’s diplomatic and considerate “Yes and no” response to these concerns.

“Yes” in that the district decided to grandfather current seniors into the old weighted system, a precautionary move to avoid unbalanced cumulative GPAs for the Class of 2017. It would be nothing but unfair to keep students who might have had a busy summer or missed registration from receiving the same weight as students who didn’t have a busy summer or who didn’t miss registration for those factors alone.
Students with disadvantaged circumstances also were at a loss with the old system, and it’s comforting to know the new policy helps equalize the scope of academic opportunity for future students who have aspirations of higher class rank or a more competitive GPA but not as many resources.

“No” in that the Class of 2018 and beyond will not receive credit for the select courses, a safe cutoff to completely roll out the policy for the first wave of students. Since summer 2016 was the first term that Class of 2018 students were allowed to enroll in Academic Enrichment at Sierra, this was the least consequential time to apply the policy, as no class of 2018 students had the chance to take weighted courses prior.

Though it was a controversial and unclear policy when first proposed, it’s relieving to see clear rationale in the district’s final decision. It restores our faith in the district’s judgement. Even if this answer does not sooth frustration toward the policy change, it at the very least clears confusion.

Regardless of the reason for the policy change, we appreciate and applaud the district for taking into account that the Class of 2017 is in a different situation than that of later classes and forming two policies to implement it fairly instead of applying one policy to both circumstances.