Riverhead school board suspends Regents Exam weighting policy for 2024: May 14 school board wrap-up

For the third year in a row, a Riverhead student’s state Regents examination score will not negatively impact their final course average. 

The Riverhead Board of Education voted last Tuesday to suspend its policy that weighs the exam as 20% of a student’s final course average. The exam will still count if it improves the student’s average, according to the board resolution suspending the policy. The vote comes after months of debate between parents, faculty, administrators and board members about whether to change the policy — and if so, how it should be amended.

While board members disagreed on how to change the policy during discussions at prior school board meetings, they voted unanimously to suspend the policy for this school year’s exams. The board members did not comment during the vote.

Some parents and school board members have been pushing for the district to change the policy to weigh Regents exam results only if the score improves that student’s grade, a policy which has been coined “do no harm.” Advocates of the policy argue that the Regents exams, which students are required to pass to earn their diploma, should not be able to harm a student’s grade point average for a course. The performance of a student on one lengthy test, which a student could perform poorly on due to factors outside of the classroom, should not count the same as a quarter of the school year, they said. 

Others, including some Riverhead teachers, have argued that eliminating the weight of the Regents exam would decrease its importance and disrupt the class ranking system currently in place.

The school board has been grappling with the policy over the last few months. At first board members considered changing the policy to reduce the weight of the exam to 12%, before tabling that proposal and pursuing a 10% weight. School board members said in previous meetings that they would continue discussions of how the policy should be amended.

The current policy weighs a student’s Regents exam score in required courses as 20% of their final course average, although the policy was temporarily suspended and replaced with the “do no harm” policy during the last two school years because of concerns about pandemic-related learning loss.

Also during the May 14 meeting, the school board:

• Extended for another year contracts with several firms for professional services, including the district’s law firm, school physician, auditors and finance advisor.
• Awarded new contracts for professional services in response to several bids for the 2025 school year.
• Recognized Phillips Avenue Elementary student Sarah Levenson, who won a poster contest organized by the New York State Bar Association.
• Hired Arlene Durkalski, the district’s recently retired personnel director, as a consultant from May 15 to July 20 for $150 an hour, not to exceed 30 hours. 
• Accepted a $1,000 donation from the Town of Riverhead for servicing and upkeep of the Riverhead High School Young Observatory.
• Accepted a $5,000 donation from The Jacob Marley Foundation for the Jeri Schlipp Memorial Scholarship Fund.
• Accepted a total of $801 from from Taylor Burgess, a Riverhead High School Alumnus of the class of 2014, who donated $401 from a concert held at the Jamesport Meeting House to the Riverhead High School Music Department, and an additional $400 from an anonymous matching donation from the same event.
• Accepted a donation of 54 books (30 different titles) from the Heart of Riverhead Civic Association. The civic group raised $1,000 for the purchase of the books. which celebrate diversity and inclusion.
• Accepted a donation of $300 from Glenwood Village to the Riverhead High School Chamber Orchestra.
• Accepted a donation of multiple boxes containing a vast personal collection of baseball cards from Jim Foster.
• Accepted a donation of the book “Maybe you will survive: A Holocaust memoir” from authors Aron Goldfarb and Graham Diamond in conjunction with The Heart of Riverhead Civic Association.