After years of deliberation, the Plano ISD board of trustees voted unanimously to adopt a new practice of how it ranks its students. Read about the new practice and more from Tuesday night's meeting below:


Trustees adopt new class ranking practice


Plano ISD students graduating in spring 2023 and beyond will no longer be ranked based on the GPAs that appear on their transcripts.

After hearing the recommendation to alter PISD's class-ranking practice from district staff in April, the board of trustees voted on Tuesday to adopt a new class-ranking practice: Report a cumulative GPA to be published on all students’ transcripts and a separate, ranking GPA used solely to determine the top 10 percent of the junior and senior classes.

As previously reported by Community Impact Newspaper, the ranking GPA factors grades from the following course areas: English, math, science and social studies. The ranking GPA will not be published on student’s transcripts.

Trustee David Stolle said he wanted to make sure students who will graduate under the unaltered class ranking practice would still feel free to take non-weighted courses.

“I do want you to continue to think about it—about ways to, if not changing the system, if there are ways to change the messaging for students so they know it’s okay to take art, it’s okay to take theater,” Stolle said.








Trustees OK expenditure to increase school resource officers in PISD schools


PISD middle schools, high schools and senior high schools will have more police officers, also referred to as school resource officers, on their respective campuses after the board of trustees approved an expenditure increase to reimburse the city for the service.

The approved expenditure will increase the district's payments for the service to $173,578 per month, which is an increased cost of $118,341 per month. The city of Plano foots the other 50 percent of the bill for the school resource officers. That approved expenditure for the monthly payments will last from June 1, 2018, through Sept. 30, 2018.

The expenditure pays for a total of 25 police officers and one sergeant in PISD schools, according to a district-prepared document. The new school resource officers will undergo a training period, and will begin monitoring Plano schools in fall 2019, as previously reported by Community Impact Newspaper.

PISD Superintendent Sara Bonser said increasing security in PISD campuses was one of her main priorities when she began her tenure April 1.





District appoints new principal, chief operating officer


The district appointed Janis Williams to be the new Plano West Senior High School principal. Janis Williams was previously the principal at Clark High School.

The district also announced the appointment of Theresa Williams as the new chief operating officer. Theresa Williams comes to Plano from Lubbock ISD, where she was the deputy superintendent.