Each current Kingsley High School student had every grade re-calculated after the school administration discovered PowerSchool was misaligned with the Kingsley high school student handbook, said Superintendent Keith Smith.
In total, the recalculation resulted in 2,141 changed semester grades covering a 3.5-year period, said Ryan Jarvi, North Ed communications director.
According to MI School Data, Kingsley Area High School had 500 students during the 2021-22 school year.
No grades were changed negatively.
North Ed is unaware of this issue cropping up in other school districts, Jarvi added.
Kingsley first adopted PowerSchool more than 10 years ago, Smith said. At that time, the school administration programmed PowerSchool such that it gave students grades that did not align with the grading system laid out in the student handbook, an issue that was only surfaced once his daughter sought a grade appeal, Smith said.
In spring 2021, Smith's ex-wife submitted an appeal for one of their daughter's grades, Smith said.
Tony Temple, the board president at that time, created a committee to address her appeal that included board members, then-high school principal Mike Moran, the high school counselor and high school teachers, Board President Beth Lajko said in an email. The board's trustees asked Moran if other students were affected, and he said that that wasn't the case, Smith said.
The appeal was accepted and Smith's daughter's grade was changed.
"The result of the appeal was to align the student's grade with the scale in the student handbook," Lajko said.
Around February 2022, Smith said Lajko, handed him two transcripts — his daughter's and another student's. Someone had printed both transcripts out and circulated them after noticing a discrepancy in how their grades were calculated, Smith said.
Lajko said she could not comment on where she received the two transcripts as she is working with the Kingsley Federation of Teachers Union representative and an attorney on the matter.
In spring 2022, Kingsley trustees tasked Smith with investigating how other students' grades may be affected by the same technical problem. The school's IT department ran a query and found that other students were impacted, Lajko said.
Smith returned to the board at their April 11 meeting to present them with the technical error that was discovered.
At that April meeting, the board voted unanimously to correct the discrepancy between the grading scale in the student handbook and PowerSchool, according to board meeting notes. By their May 9 meeting, Smith had worked with Northwest Education Services, the local Intermediate School District, and the issue had been rectified, according to board meeting minutes.
"Unfortunately, once kids have graduated and diplomas have been issued and kids are out of school, you can't go back to once that transcript has been finalized," Smith said. "My heart goes out to anybody who was negatively affected by this."
Smith said the Kingsley school administration received very few grade appeals, and most of them contest the method of their work being graded.
Some parents remain skeptical that Smith acted in bad faith and disagree with the board's decision to change past grades.
Jason Hillier, a Kingsley parent, questioned why a slew of grades were changed retroactively instead of the school administration instituting the new grading system for the future. He said it seemed like Smith was just doing this to cover the fact that his daughter's grade was changed unfairly.
"He created this whole, 'Well, these percentages will round everybody's great up hoping that would make everybody happy,'" Hillier said. "Some kids are probably excited they went from a B to A minus or whatever, but ... when you create a policy, you never go backwards, you always start forward."
Lajko and Smith both said changing students' past grades was the "right thing" to correct the error for students.
When asked if Smith had any influence on the outcome of his daughter's grade appeal, Lajko said "absolutely not."
"He was present with his ex-wife to present their appeal to the committee," Lajko said. "He was not present for the discussion or decision."
Smith insisted that he did not change his daughter's grade unfairly.
"It's unfortunate that it was my daughter, but that doesn't mean you ignore the situation that affects all the other children," Smith said. "The right thing is the right thing. And when it comes to your attention, you do need to do the right thing."
Steve Morgan, a Kingsley parent, said the fact that Smith conducted the investigation into PowerSchool was a conflict of interest because of the role his daughter's grade appeal played in the matter. He said he wished the board had hired an outside entity to conduct the investigation instead.
"Dr. Smith was not part of any decision or discussion with his daughter's grade," Lajko said when asked if she thought this was a potential conflict of interest. "He was directed to investigate to ensure no other student's grades were affected as the direction from the committee for further follow up was not done."
The board's trustees also did not aptly address the gravity of the situation, given that the incorrect grading system may have negatively impacted thousands of former high school students, Morgan said.
"If the grading system was off for 15 years, or 20 years, how many kids did that cost scholarship money and college advancements?" Morgan asked.
"It's just kind of a mess," he said.
©2022 The Record-Eagle (Traverse City, Mich. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
