Harvard-Westlake • Studio City • Volume 32 • Issue 4 • Dec. 14, 2022 • hwchronicle.com
Weighted GPAs return
Illness leads to absences
By Justin Tang and Nathan Wang
By Chloe Park and Natasha Speiss
The school reported a record-breaking 344 sick absences in November this year, the most since March 2019, according to Student Discipline and Attendance Coordinator Gabriel Preciado. In the most recent Chronicle Poll, 67% of students said they were recently sick. 65 students were absent due to illness on Nov. 7 alone, according to data retrieved from the number of absence forms submitted through the online parent portal. Head of Upper School Beth Slattery said the COVID-19 pandemic encouraged symptomatic students to stay home. “I do think that COVID-19 actually caused people to be more mindful of staying home,” Slattery said. “Now, if you are coming to school and you’re coughing, other people will police you, so you also don’t want to kind of get shamed. I think people stay home because they’re embarrassed to come to school sick.” Community Health Officer Milo Sini said he advises students, sick or not, to consistently practice good health practices. “It’s this balance of having a really high immune system, which includes plenty of sleep, good eating habits, taking your vitamins and doing all those things, which becomes a little bit hard,” Sini said. “[Students] stay up late and study late and what have you. My advice is to try to have a balanced life, and predominantly, sleep and good nutrition are key.” President Rick Commons said the school values an in-person learning environment as much as the medical well-being of the students. “We’ll prioritize being in person in as normal a fashion as possible alongside the health and safety of our community,” Commons said. “Those do seem to me to sometimes be an inverse relationship, and that’s sometimes a challenge.” • Continued on A4
faculty and the fact that they are more than capable of creating a curriculum better than what the College Board can design,” Slattery said. “AP courses can be limiting because they’re tied to an external test, as they’re designed for schools with fewer resources than us that need an external way of validating the quality of a student’s performance. So we’re not philosophically saying we’re against APs, but we want the experts in the subjects to decide what is best for our students.” Science Teacher and Chair of the Faculty Advisory Committee (FAC) Heather Audesirk said FAC decided to slowly phase out AP classes upon growing conversations about the role the AP program has at the school and will continue to discuss if all AP classes should be eliminated. “In the discussions in FAC, it immediately became apparent that different departments had different opinions about AP classes,” Audesirk said. “This meant that it didn’t feel right to make a sweeping policy that would require everyone to eliminate their AP classes or require people to keep those classes. The general consensus seemed to be that it might be in the best interests of the school to begin
the process of phasing out AP classes, especially in subjects where the APs weren’t serving the teachers and students well.” History Department Head Larry Klein said the History Department felt that because the school’s APUSH course does not explicitly follow the AP curriculum and prepare students for the exam, the change better represents what the course is. “This change clarifies that we’re not teaching the College Board curriculum, but instead, teaching our version of an advanced United States history course,” Klein said. “By having the AP title attached to it, the course and student attention become too centered on the AP exam, and while the course coincidentally prepares [students] for the exam, it has never been the centerpiece of the course.” English Department Head Larry Weber said as the AP exam has become less important, the English Department wanted more freedom to design their courses. “As the AP test and its results have become de-emphasized, we wanted to continue to develop our senior electives, with the same rigor and more creativity, outside the auspices of the College Board,” Weber said.
The Faculty Academic Committee (FAC) voted to include weighted GPAs on student transcripts starting with the class of 2024, following a proposal from the Upper School Dean Team on Dec. 8. The school considered adding weighted GPAs to transcripts in September but decided to postpone the decision so it would not affect current seniors’ application process, as reported by The Chronicle on Sept. 28. The school solely reported weighted GPAs until the class of 2021 but then decided to switch to reporting only unweighted GPAs for the classes of 2022 and 2023. However, the Upper School Dean Team decided it would be helpful to include both unweighted and weighted GPAs on student transcripts to measure rigor and academic achievement, according to Upper School Dean Sharon Cuseo. Cuseo, who serves on FAC, said having both GPA metrics on transcripts will encourage students to find a balance between taking difficult classes and earning high grades. “I hope people decide to challenge themselves appropriately because no challenge is not the way to go,” Cuseo said. “If you are just paying attention to the unweighted GPA and get straight As but don’t challenge yourself, that’s not good. Nor should you take everything that you possibly can at the hardest level, so much so that it decreases your performance. I personally think that [this decision] will help people hit the sweet spot.” While the school currently includes only unweighted GPAs on transcripts, students are able to access their weighted GPAs through the program College Kickstart. College Kickstart classifies how likely a student is to get accepted into a college based on their GPA and uses data specific to the school.
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Inbalanced Composition: Students and faculty discuss the lack of male-identifying students enrolled in the school’s visual art courses.
Betting Big: Following the failure of Proposition 27, students and faculty reflect on sports betting culture and its legal status.
DAVIS MARKS/CHRONICLE
APUSH IN ACTION: History Teacher Peter Sheehy discusses 19th century American history with his Advanced Placement United States History (APUSH) class of juniors. APUSH is one of multiple AP classes being discontinued.
Departments decrease the number of Advanced Placement courses offered
By Davis Marks
The English, History and Math Departments are removing several Advanced Placement (AP) courses from their offerings following changes to the school’s approach to AP courses, beginning in the 2023-2024 school year. The English Department is discontinuing all of its AP courses, the History Department is discontinuing AP United States History (APUSH) and the Math Department is discontinuing AP Computer Science. APUSH and AP English courses will be changed to honors-level courses, and AP Computer Science will be replaced by an unweighted Advanced Computer Science course. In light of the replacement of AP classes with honors courses, the school is changing its AP limit policy to an AP and Honors limit. Under the new system, sophomores will be able to take a maximum of three AP and honors courses, and juniors and seniors will be able to take a maximum of five. Head of Upper School Beth Slattery said the adjustment to the classes themselves was inspired by many teachers feeling limited by the AP curriculum. “The changes were mostly inspired by the quality of our
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IN THIS ISSUE
A2 Featured on Forbes: Six alumni who graduated within the last decade are featured on the 2022 Forbes 30 Under 30 list.
A10 Analyzing AI: Print Managing Editor Claire Conner ’23 shares her thoughts on ChatGPT, and ChatGPT responds on B8.
Family Feud: As students spend the holiday season with family and friends, they face differences of opinion with loved ones.