BUTLER TWP — Butler School District officials are proposing a change to how the grade-point average of high school students is calculated.

Under the high school's current GPA formula, students are essentially penalized for taking elective courses, even if they earn an A in those classes.

As a result, many high school students who are shooting for the highest-possible GPA end up taking multiple study halls instead of participating in classes such as band, chorus, accounting, CPR or computer programming, assistant superintendent Brian Slamecka said at Monday night's policy committee meeting.

The idea for the new formula came from the Karns City School District, which developed it to deal with similar participation concerns, officials said.

The current number is derived by adding up the already-weighted grades and dividing by the number of earned credits. An A is worth 4 points in a regular class, 4.5 points in an honors class and 5 points in an advanced placement class.

The proposed formula is to calculate an unweighted GPA and add bonus points for advanced classes afterward. Students will get 0.50 of a point for each Advanced Placement and 0.0125 of a point for each honors class. This system would still reward students for taking advanced classes, but it would not penalize them for taking electives, Slamecka said.

“It will get more kids into classes and out of study halls,” he said.

The district should be encouraging students to take advantage of all the opportunities they have to get a more diverse academic background, board member Neil Convery said.

“It's important for the school district to do. I think it will have kids leaving Butler High School with a better education and a fuller education,” Convery said.

The new formula is proposed as a change to the school board's class rank policy, which had its first of three readings by the board Monday.

Slamecka said the administration would like to implement this new formula starting next year only for ninth-graders, though it is still looking into whether the district's student information system can calculate GPAs based on two different formulas, he said.

Changing the GPAs of students who have selected classes based on the old formula would be unfair and could affect class rankings, he said.