Beginning this school year Lafayette Parish students grades 2nd through 12th will no longer be graded on homework assignments.

The board approved the measure seven to one while one member was absent.

This story has been a talker since the Lafayette Parish School Board made the vote on July 18.

Judging from the reactions on the KLFY Facebook page, opinions varied drastically.

However, we caught up with members of the school board to find out what led to their decision

District 3 representative, Elroy Broussard, was the only member of the board to vote ‘no’ on the policy change that will no longer allow students in second through twelfth grade to be graded on homework assignments.

Broussard says, “In order to be successful, what they say,’ There’s three points to being successful, preparation, preparation, preparation.’ If you don’t take time at the end of the day to recap what you’ve done in order to prepare for tomorrow, we fail.”

Students will still be given homework assignments and teachers will be allowed to comment on them.

“You don’t necessarily get graded at practice in football, you get graded at the game, you win or lose”, says board vice president, Jeremy Hidalgo. 

He says a committee was formed with a representative from each school in the parish, to come up with the Pupil Progression Plan.

“They met on several occasions. They went through the document line by line to come up with a good solid document that the district can support”, Hidalgo explains.

Like Broussard, Hidalgo says getting that recap of what was learned that day is essential.

But, grading students on the assignments has caused issues.

“Homework is very important, no one is suggesting otherwise. However, grading it seemed to be problematic because a lot of time it could drastically alter an ultimate score depending on how much homework is given or not given,” says Hidalgo.

Even with the difference of opinion between members, they both agreed the goal is to make Lafayette Parish an ‘A’ school district and that’s by far the most important concern at hand.