This year City High has seen some of its highest rates of D’s and F’s, and it’s not just City High, it’s the whole School District. To counteract this City High administrators have made a plan to help students that are failing classes. 

“The purpose in the slip is just a very simple form, quick and easy to fill out where teachers indicate a student that is failing,” Principal Bacon explained. 

The “F-Slips” are individual evaluations of students that are filled out each week by teachers if that student is failing the class. According to Principal Bacon, City High has used this “F-Slip” system before when students were failing classes. The idea of the slip system started with former Assistant Principal and current Principal of Elizabeth Tate High School, Ann Browning. Tate High School uses this system all year round to get a sense of who is struggling and to make a plan to improve. 

“We’re gonna make sure that no one is slipping through the cracks,” Bacon said.  

The first round of slips was turned into administrators Friday, October 30. Once collected the forms were divided among members of City High’s administrative team and the student support team to examine and provide the necessary support for each student. To complete the form a teacher will write a brief description of a plan for that student and try to contact a parent or guardian. 

Teachers, like Scott Black, have observed students, both hybrid and online, struggling with at-home learning.

“I think there are issues in the asynchronous time with time management and technology, but also things with focus and just how real the actual world is,” Black said.

Other teachers have noticed that the majority of their failing students are the ones fully online. In the first week of the “F-Slip” system teachers have filled out anywhere from five to a dozen forms. 

“Despite our best efforts on the asynchronous days, we know that you know it’s still no substitute for being in class five days a week,” Bacon said. “I don’t think it’s surprising that kids are struggling.”

At the end of the first trimester, before a student receives a failing grade the teacher will fill out the “End of Trimester Failing Grade Interventions.” Bacon explained the form is a checklist of items and steps a teacher must take before the final grade to ensure that they have done “everything in their power to help the students succeed.” The form was created by the Instructional Leadership Team, a group of City High teachers, that outlines what they believe a teacher should do before assigning a failing grade. 

“I think that this is not the final version of it that we will see,” Haley Johannesen, an English teacher at City High said. “I think it’ll be revised and adapted until it works for everybody.”

The “F-Slip” system will continue through the rest of the trimester and then be re-evaluated for the second and third trimesters. Teachers’ advice to students for this year is to keep in contact with teachers and create a system for time management during asynchronous days. 

“Reach out to your teachers,” Johannesen advises. “Email your teachers, keep a planner, have some sort of system where you are checking your email each day, waking up each day and checking canvas and reaching out when you need that help and not waiting until you’re in person day ask.”