The Warren County R-III School Board recently finalized the high school graduation honors program at last month's meeting, held Aug. 13. Last year, the school board approved changes to the Warrenton High School honors program. Instead of recognizing the Top 10 percent of graduates, the new system will recognize students according to a collegiate, cum laude, magna cum laude and summa cum laude system, based on grade point average (GPA), rather than class rank. Although the new system has been approved, it will be implemented together with the previous system until 2013, when this year's freshman class graduates. "Since we have essentially entered into a contract with the students, seniors, juniors and sophomores, we are going to overlay for three years and do both, but starting with the incoming freshman class we are going to go only with the GPAs and eliminate the Top 10 system," said Dr. John Long, superintendent. The new system is expected to benefit both students and the school staff, who sometimes have difficulty calculating the top 10 percent due to varying graduation dates and changes in the student population. "It will be easier for the students as well as the staff. Students and parents get very confused. If a student moves in, say in October of their senior year, that could bump someone out of the top 10, who has been in the top 10 all four years," said Sharyl Kelsch, high school assistant principal. The board designated the necessary GPAs for each level, as requested by Kelsch. Students with a 4.0 GPA will be awarded the honor of summa cum laude, those with 3.9-3.99 will be magna cum laude, and 3.75-3.9. will be designated cum laude. Alpha Academy Diplomas Also at the Aug. 13 meeting, board members debated the issue of diplomas for Alpha Academy students, though no action was taken to change the current setup. "Right now students at the Alpha Academy receive a Warrenton High School diploma as a subset of Warrenton High School. If you would like a separate diploma, we will need to go forward with that," Long said. Several board members were against giving Alpha Academy students different diplomas. "I don't know that I'm in favor of segregating that group of people, they're still part of us," said Dale Schowe, school board president. Carmen Schulze agreed. "I think it's discrimination," she said. Other board members disagreed. "They are not going through high school as a traditional student, like the other students who come to class every day, the expectations are different, and it's just not the same as anybody who has gone through the four years in the traditional manner," Jan Sutherland said. Beth Banze agreed with Sutherland, but argued that the amount of time spent at the Alpha Academy should be the deciding factor. She noted that while some students might spend as little as eight weeks at Alpha Academy, others attend the school for three years. "If you are spending three years of your high school career at the Alpha Academy, then let them go through the high school graduation ceremony, but their diploma might have to say something different," Banze said. "That may be a question of time constraint." Teresa Scott noted that credits rather than time might be the best way to determine eligibility for a regular WHS diploma. "If you want to look at a dividing line, the number of credits would probably be the easiest way to do that. The seniors going over there for one more credit are probably picking up credit 26, whereas you only need 24 credits to graduate from Alpha Academy," Scott said.