On Nov. 15, the District 100 Board of Education reached a vote of 4-3 to remove proficiency-based grading from District 100 schools.

The pilot grading system, initially introduced to Boone County schools in 2016, has been frequently pushed by the district to transition into a modern approach to education. The removal of the grading system has been seen as a loss for the district by some faculty members.

“I think it’s unfortunate,” English teacher John Hannel said. “We’ve made a lot of progress with the system, and I think that ultimately it’s helped a lot of our students.”

With the PBG era coming to an end, district superintendent Daniel Woestman is to come up with a plan for next year’s grading system next month.

The meeting, which started at 6:30 p.m., took nearly six hours, as multiple members of the community, teachers and administrators spoke at the meeting.

“I believe the decision they made has definitely left a lot of questions,” Principal Billy Lewis said. “They voted down our current system but we don’t yet have any kind of guidance as to what to do differently.”

While some of the staff was disappointed, overall; there seems to be a wide variety of stances and opinions.

“I have mixed feelings about the decision because I’ve put a lot of time and energy into building in this new system,” social studies teacher Bradley Stott said. “It does mean kind of the tearing down of a lot of labor, and hard work over a long period of time. But on the other side of it, I can see that a lot of parents were having a hard time understanding the system, and a lot of students also.”

Another key point that Stott made that really swayed the board to vote against PBG was the poll results showing that 71 percent of the District 100 student body preferred standard grading over PBG.

All in all, while some teachers and staff were advocates for PBG and some weren’t, there appears to be an overall frustration throughout the staff. As  Stott said, the staff put in countless hours of work for it now to be torn down.

“I’m a big one for clarity: making sure people know what to do, that’s the purpose of our expectations,” Lewis said. “So, I definitely wish we had more clarity from Monday, but I suppose that will be coming at a future date.”