Principal's Office

List of 9 items.

• Registration / Scheduling

  Registration for the following year's courses takes place during the spring. Students are encouraged to review their course selection requests with their parents who are required to sign the registration form. Counselors and College Counselors are available for guidance with registration. Students will be assigned some courses and levels as determined by school and departmental policies. Other courses or electives are scheduled as possible. The Assistant Principal for Academic Programs makes all decisions concerning a student's schedule and assignment of classes.

• Advanced Placement (AP) and Honors Course Entry Criteria

  Saint Ignatius College Prep offers a broad spectrum of college-level, advanced placement courses. The schoolwide criteria for entering AP courses are:

  • Students must have a teacher recommendation, indicating that they possess the needed work ethic, study habits and self-discipline to do all the work that is required in a course taught at the college level.
  • Students with less than the required grade level in the department-designated course(s) may take an AP course with teacher and department chair recommendation.
  • Placement in honors courses is made by the department in which the courses are offered.

• Course Load Required for All Students

  All Saint Ignatius students are expected to carry a full course load in every semester of attendance. Generally, this means six or six and one-half courses per semester in freshman/sophomore year and five or five and one-half courses per semester in junior/senior year. After consultation with their counselor, most students are encouraged to take advantage of additional elective courses by registering for an additional half-unit or unit each year. Students may register for more than six and one-half credits but only with the permission of the Assistant Principal for Academic Programs.

• Withdrawal from Courses

  All course choices (including second and third choices) will be considered binding, so students and parents should consider their options and recommendations with great care when registering. In some rare cases a student will be allowed to add or drop classes, such as when a chosen course will not be offered, when a student has had a teacher in a previous course or when a student has been deemed by the department chair and the Assistant Principal for Academics to have been placed incorrectly in a class. However, in order to ensure that the greatest number of students is in the correct classes from the first day of the semester onward, students will not be allowed to choose free periods, teachers or classes other than those for which they have registered unless there is a valid academic reason in the judgment of the Assistant Principal for Academics. Every effort must be made on the part of the student to affect these changes during the designated schedule adjustment days. Note: A grade of “Withdrew Failing” (WF) may be assigned if a course is dropped after a reasonable period of time as determined by the Assistant Principal for Academic Programs.

• Homework

  Students are given home assignments on a regular basis. These assignments will vary in length, but students should expect to spend about three hours each day on homework assignments.

• Eligibility for Athletics and Co-curricular Activities

  To be eligible to play and or participate in all co-curricular athletic and student activity programs, students must not have any reported grade of F and must maintain a minimum GPA of 1.75. Grades will be posted each Thursday by 5:00 pm. These posted grades will determine eligibility beginning the following Monday through Sunday of the next calendar week. If a student raises his/her GPA to a 1.75 or above and does not receive any Fs on the subsequent grade report, he/she will become eligible beginning the Monday after that subsequent report. A student who is ineligible at the end of a semester will remain ineligible for the duration of the following semester, per IHSA guidelines.
  
  For the purposes of eligibility only, due to a potential lack of accumulated assignments which may result in a disproportionate effect on a student’s overall semester grade, Saint Ignatius considers all students who were eligible based on the previous semester’s grades to continue to be so until the posting of the fourth weekly itemized grade report. First semester freshman, who have no previous high school grades, will all be eligible until the fourth posting. At the time of the fourth weekly posting, the calculated grade on the report will stand in determining eligibility for all students.
  
  During the abbreviated weeks of school before Thanksgiving and Easter breaks, student grades will be checked on the last school day of the week. These grades will be the recorded course grades for a student, and affect his/her eligibility, until the regularly scheduled eligibility check during the next school attendance week.
  
  Grade reports will not be posted during exam week, the last week of each semester. Final itemized grade reports will be posted after final semester grades are posted.
  
  During this period of ineligibility, at the coach’s discretion, athletes may come to practice but not participate or dress for any contests; club moderators, in collaboration with the Director of Student Activities, will determine consequences for ineligibility for their groups.
  
  Please see the IHSA website at www.ihsa.org for further information.

• Academic Integrity Policy

  The Saint Ignatius community expects academic honesty and integrity of all its students. The members of the Saint Ignatius community, both faculty and students, expect that students will assume responsibility for their own learning and honestly demonstrate the breadth and depth of that learning.

  
  The educational program at Saint Ignatius stresses not only the acquisition of skills and knowledge but also the formation of a moral consciousness. Students explore the ethical and moral implications of many issues, yet no issue is more important for exploration than the student's own individual honesty and integrity. The faculty and students should commit themselves to this exploration. It is the responsibility of the faculty to call the students to moral behavior - to honesty and integrity. It is the responsibility of the students to learn moral and ethical principles and to live according to them.

  
  All students’ work—homework, notes, quizzes, tests, essays, group projects, research papers, lab reports—should be a product of their own effort. To offer someone else’s work—whether a student or not—as if it were one’s own is dishonest. Such behaviors as copying homework, taking information from another during a quiz or test, and plagiarizing (presenting another’s writing or ideas as your own) constitute serious lapses in moral judgment.

  
  Assisting a person to be dishonest is also a moral lapse. To supply another with one’s homework to be copied so that the other student can submit it as his/her own, to supply information to another during a quiz or test, and to write a paper for another are violations of the norm of moral behavior. Obviously, to steal a quiz or a test and/or to share the information from a stolen quiz or test is morally reprehensible. If a student has an electronic device that can store or communicate information in a testing area, this shall be a violation of academic integrity as well as a regular violation.

  
  The rewards for academic honesty are a sense of personal accomplishment, self-esteem, and self-respect in addition to the knowledge gained. The consequences of academic dishonesty are both academic and disciplinary.

  
  Any student offering someone else's work—whether a fellow student’s or another person’s—as if it were one's own may receive a zero for that assignment. Any student assisting another student to be dishonest may receive a zero. The teacher will complete a dishonesty referral to the Assistant Principal for Academic Programs.

  • For a first offense, the Assistant Principal will notify the student's Guidance Counselor, write a letter to the parents, and speak to the student to explain the seriousness of this lapse and the consequences of a recurrence.
  • For a second offense, the Assistant Principal will have a conference with the parents, Guidance Counselor, and the student and place the student on probation.
  • For a third offense within a student's academic career at Saint Ignatius, the Assistant Principal for Academic Programs may recommend a Discipline Board hearing. The Board will impose appropriate sanctions ranging from suspension to withdrawal from a course with an "F" to expulsion.

  
  A student caught stealing a quiz or a test and/or sharing the stolen information will appear before the Discipline Board for a hearing. The Board will recommend appropriate sanctions which may include expulsion from school.

• Summer School

  If a student fails a course during the school year and this course is offered in the Saint Ignatius Summer School, the failing grade must be made up in the Saint Ignatius Summer School Program. Saint Ignatius grants credit for other schools’ summer school courses only when they are a direct equivalent of courses offered in the SICP regular school-year academic program as determined by the Assistant Principal for Academics.
  
  A student taking credit courses in summer school may receive credit for the course, and the grade will be included in the calculation of the student’s GPA. The exception to this is the student who has not failed a course but who elects to take the credit course in summer school in order to improve his or her skills in that subject area. The student’s regular school year grades will stand, and no additional credit will be granted for taking the summer school course. A student taking a credit course at a summer school other than Saint Ignatius must have the course approved by the Assistant Principal for Academic Programs. The course must be consistent with the courses in the SICP curriculum.
  
  Core courses must be taken during the regular school year except for cases of making up a semester failure. Core courses include: English 1, 2, 3, 4; Language 1, 2, 3; Algebra 1; Geometry; Algebra 2/Trigonometry; Pre-calculus (for students who took Geometry during freshman year); Physics and Chemistry, World History, U.S. History, Fundamentals of Economics or Globalization, and Religious Studies 1, 2, 3, 4. Prior permission from the Assistant Principal for Academic Programs must be granted for any credit to be accepted by Saint Ignatius. No more than 1.5 units of summer school credit from schools other than SICP will be accepted toward the fulfillment of graduation requirements. This limit does not, however, apply to summer courses taken to make-up failures. Credits for pre-approved summer school courses will be accepted, placed on transcripts, and added to the cumulative total of credits.

• Ebooks/Ibooks/Textbooks

  All students must have an iPad with them each school day. Most textbooks will be purchased in an electronic format. Each year prior to the beginning of school students will receive their class schedules from the Principal’s Office. All courses and most required texts are listed. Students will purchase electronic texts as noted in the booklist. Some titles will be purchased by SICP and billed to students.