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Prince Rupert report cards are coming, but all won't be complete

While some B.C. school districts have told parents not to expect report cards for some or all students, this isn’t the case in Prince Rupert
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Prince Rupert teachers held a rally outside of the school board office on Friday. PRDTU president Kathy Murphy said “teachers continue to hope for a settlement that both supports students and is fair to teachers”.

While some British Columbian school districts have told parents not to expect report cards for some or all students, this isn’t the case in Prince Rupert’s School District (SD52).

Report cards have not been designated as an essential service by the B.C. Labour Relations Board, but parents and guardians of Prince Rupert students can expect at least some information on their performance.

“I know some school districts aren’t, but the situation varies district-to-district ... some of (the report cards) are quite incomplete, but they do have good information included that we feel parents will be interested in,” said SD52 superintendent Sandra Jones.

Report cards for elementary and middle school students have been sent out.

“They are completed to a greater or lesser degree. Some of them will have final marks, some of them will not,” said Jones.

“We’ve sent a cover letter with all of the report cards to explain that there might be some challenges and difference around it. But this is the best we could do right now under the circumstances.”

At the high school level, Jones said report cards for Grade 9 students will not have final marks but “there will be some information in them for people”.

But Grade 10 through 12 students will have their final marks sent home, with Prince Rupert District Teachers’ Union (PRDTU) president Kathy Murphy confirming teachers are completing them.

“They probably won’t have any commentary at all. It will be a very lean report card,” Jones said.

While the B.C. Labour Relations Board hasn’t deemed report cards as an essential service, it has for Grade 10 and 11 provincial exams. But teachers have only been required to supervise the tests, not mark them.

In a statement, the PRDTU said the authenticity of final marks in English 10 and Social Studies 11 will be compromised by the B.C. Ministry of Education’s decision to cut essay responses on the provincial exams.

“This means students who wrote in January will be subject to different standards than students who wrote in June. Teachers fundamentally disagree with this decision, which we feel is profoundly unfair to students taking those courses in semester two,” reads the statement.