Honors and advanced placement students at John Stark Regional High School will not be able to partake in one of the many rewards of hard study and determination next year, known as “crisping.”

And Weare resident Helen Ray is not happy about that, especially since her daughter, Sarah, 14, just completed her freshman year at Stark in the honors program. Crisping allows students at Stark to be excused from final exams if they’ve earned a minimum 90 average in the class.

Advanced placements students can crisp with an 80 average if they take the state standardized AP test at the end of the class. The problem is not in taking away that opportunity, said Ray, but in continuing to let those students in the regular program crisp if they qualify.

“As of right now, every student and parent I talk to is like, ‘how could this be fair?’” said Ray. “All I want is for them to come across as fair. Either everyone gets the opportunity, or no one gets the opportunity.”

It is only slightly easier pointswise for honors and AP students to “crisp,” as honors students automatically get half a percent added onto their averages, and AP students get a full percent added on.

Superintendent Christine Tyrie said the ultimate decision lay with Stark Principal Michael Turmelle, adding the decision to take crisping from honors and AP students was about a year in the making and involved parents as well as school administrators.

Despite repeated phone calls, Turmelle was not available for comment by press time.

The rationale behind the decision, said Tyrie, is that honors and AP students need to have the utmost confidence in their test taking abilities prior to entering college.

“These are generally students that are headed for competitive universities, and test taking is something the student should have experience with,” Tyrie said. Tyrie added that she understands Ray’s position that the opportunity to “crisp out” of finals should be equal across the board, for students in the upper eschelon and average to lowlevel students.

“Would I agree? I don’t know. I don’t know enough about it,” Tyrie said. “We’re largely sitebased, which means that principals are pretty much in charge of running their schools.”

Ray said the fact that the kids in the highest levels are most likely to go to competitive colleges is no reason to have different rules regarding crisping for Stark students.

“They wouldn’t be in these honors programs if they didn’t know how to take tests,” said Ray, pointing out that students in open classes will also apply to colleges and universities when they graduate. “It’s too bad, and I really wish he had just taken it away from everybody.”

Crisping, or averaging out of finals, has been done for a long time, said Ray, and her older daughter Samantha, now a freshman at Colby-Sawyer College in New London, was given that opportunity at Stark as an honors student.

“It’s maddening because these kids will do well if they want to do well,” said Ray. “I couldn’t have given my daughter a better education than what she got at John Stark, and I think (Turmelle) is selling his own teachers short,” she said.