“I highly respect our Carrboro High staff, but I am downright ashamed.”
“Announcing a change like this in the middle of the year without notice is not only ridiculous but unprofessional.”
“The implementation and communication of this policy were a complete failure.”
These are just a few of the reactions from disgruntled Carrboro High School community members who signed the “Rescind the Belated Final Exam Policy” petition. The initiative was launched in February in response to school administration announcing that final exams would be mandatory and worth 20 percent of students’ overall class grades, effective immediately. That change would have replaced Carrboro’s previously nonexistent final exam requirement and aligned their policy with the other Chapel Hill-Carrboro City high schools, had it not been amended.
Seven weeks and 700 petition signatures after the initial policy update, school administration yielded. In an email to all Carrboro High School parents, teachers and students, Principal Helena Thomas thanked the community for their feedback and announced, “Students will be held harmless for the 2023-2024 school year, meaning their overall grade can only increase, not decrease, due to taking a required teacher-made final exam.”
Carrboro junior, Alexander Kwok, and his mother, Melinda Manning, who created the petition, said they were surprised by how much support they received.
“We didn’t know what to expect. People seem to have a very short attention span nowadays. They get upset about things, but that can fizzle quickly. But, when so many people started signing so quickly, and not just signatures, but comments too, we knew we touched a nerve,” Manning said.
With an enrollment of fewer than 900 students, Carrboro is the smallest school in CHHCS – making the flurry of comments and 700 signatures even more impressive.
“It’s one thing just making a petition, but having hundreds of people sign is huge,” Kwok said. “We created the platform, but change only happened because of the people.”
Although both Manning and Kwok consider the recent policy update to be a “fair compromise,” achieving it was not entirely straightforward. Kwok, a member of the CHCCS Student Equity and Empathy Ambassadors, initially tried to broach the subject at their monthly meeting.
“[Carrboro’s] principal, Dr. Thomas, came to our meeting, but when I tried to discuss final exams with her, I didn’t receive any concrete feedback. They didn’t choose to comment on the topic; they just avoided my question, which made me pretty upset at the time,” Kwok said.
However, when he took the issue home, his mother’s law background proved to be a valuable asset in developing his argument.
“The process of getting a law degree really changes your thinking and how you analyze issues,” Manning said. “When Alex came home and got into the policy change, my mind immediately jumped to the idea that, although a syllabus isn’t a legal contract, [Carrboro High School] was basically violating an agreement with their students.”
In the reasoning for their petition, Manning and Kwok argue that “late changes to syllabi that are punitive to students go against the concept of a syllabus as a good faith agreement,” and reference the grading policy listed in Carrboro’s 2023-2024 school handbook. Manning says that she wouldn’t have been prepared to make the petition if she had a different background.
Christian Cabrera, Carrboro’s student body president, saw that many students and teachers were unhappy when final exams were made a requirement, but he personally believes that it was a necessary change.
“Now, people are just going to go and guess on the whole exam because it can’t hurt your grade. People are definitely going to get a little bit lazy,” Cabrera said.
Despite his opinion, Cabrera still signed the petition, because he “felt it was most representative of the students.”
Andrew Chin, a junior at East Chapel Hill High School, also favors a standardized final exam policy for all schools in the district.
“Depending on the class and final exam requirements, I may study for up to 10 hours leading up to a final. It is a little frustrating that Carrboro’s students won’t have to put in as much work to get the same grade as me,” Chin said. “Softening the policy was well-intentioned, but it doesn’t translate to the real world. You won’t get rewarded for not trying.”
However, despite their focus on rescinding this year’s final exam requirement, Kwok said that he “personally wouldn’t mind having tests in future years,” which Manning agrees with. Her only suggestion would be to withhold end-of-year exams for Advanced Placement classes because they “already have a built-in final test.” Going forward, the pair aims to hold school administration accountable.
“The bigger, ongoing issue is the lack of communication. The first [final exam] policy change was only announced in an assembly, and the information felt almost hidden from parents,” Kwok said.
Manning added to his statement.
“There needs to be more transparency. The administration obviously has to make big decisions, but they should be taking input. I mean, effective communication is a two-way street,” she said.
Whether or not Carrboro maintains their current final exam policy in future years remains to be seen. When reached to request clarification, the school’s administration declined to comment.
