Taha Usha

As of last December, the HSMSE administration has mandated that extra credit strictly align with academic coursework. This change occurred after some teachers offered it to students who donated to a food drive, prompting concerns about inequity that the School Leadership Team (SLT) discussed in a meeting.

The new policy was first announced in a December 22, 2025 newsletter emailed to HSMSE staff, which has since been obtained by The Echo. “Extra credit should be aligned only to the coursework and it cannot be something that could be an unfair cost or burden on families. As an academic policy extra credit is not permissible going forward, if outside of academic, class-focused items,” it said.

Previously, there was no written policy dictating which forms of extra credit were acceptable, only verbal mentions that they could not be “random or inequitable,” Principal Dolcy said. Many extra credit assignments had rewarded student participation in school events, such as performing at the Winter Recital, attending HSMSE sports games, or bringing in supplies for chemistry experiments. 

In recent years, HSMSE club Students Against Food Insecurity (SAFI) has led food drives to local pantries. Its leaders have hoped to encourage donations by asking teachers to offer extra credit in exchange for students bringing shelf-stable food to school. “I think it was beneficial to both the students who got their grades up and to the people who were receiving the food,” said Aidana Zhanuzakova (’27), SAFI’s president.

SAFI’s most recent food drive last December donated 1,500 pounds of food to the Community Kitchen on West 116th Street; however, it raised concerns among some students, parents, and staff that not all families could contribute—and thus gain extra credit points—equally. 

HSMSE’s SLT addressed these concerns in a meeting on December 18, 2025. The Echo interviewed Douglas Chang, an SLT parent representative, and Elizabeth “Etta” Raikes (’26), an SLT senior representative, who were both present.

“In the most well-meaning way possible, I think teachers were trying to encourage charitable giving and generosity and all those things that are a wonderful characteristic of HSMSE,” Chang said. “But the unintended consequences [were] that some students may be potential recipients of that kind of charitable giving and not have the means to be a donor.”

36% of HSMSE students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, according to the 2024–25 NYCPS Demographic Snapshot. This proportion is significantly lower than that of District 5 (Central Harlem) students overall, 82%, and the citywide one, 75%. Thus, HSMSE falls under the DOE’s “economically stratified” designation, with families skewed toward higher incomes.

Referencing these economic disparities, Etta urged the HSMSE community to be more conscious that some students could not easily donate to the food drive. “I feel like there’s just not really a sense in this school of, like, ‘Not everybody is the same as me, not everybody, maybe, can afford to do this or that,’” she said.

Some parents in the SLT meeting mentioned purchasing food cans for their children, Etta added. “Some of the kids [weren’t] even doing it themselves … it [became], like, ‘What is going on?’”

Principal Dolcy was receptive to parents’ and students’ concerns, revising the extra credit guidelines to ensure relation to schoolwork and to prevent inequities from arising. “I think there was a very strong general consensus [among SLT members] that that was probably the best direction to take,” Chang said.

While teachers have been aware of the extra credit policy since December through the emailed newsletter, students received no announcement. Of 45 students surveyed by The Echo this March, only five had heard of the change, citing some teachers’ brief mentions of it in class.

Aidana, who led the food drive, understood the policy’s logic, but she was disappointed by the loss of extra credit opportunity. “[The new policy] was never officially communicated to me by admin and so it was just something that I kind of heard through the grapevine, from my predecessors,” she said. She wishes the HSMSE administration had been “more clear and transparent about it, especially because it impacts our club so much.” 

In the future, SAFI hopes to continue motivating students to donate to food drives by potentially offering community service hours.

Etta found the new extra credit guidelines fair. However, she shared Aidana’s desire for greater transparency: “An issue in this school is communication—from admin, teachers, students, everybody—there’s not enough of that,” she said. In discussions with her peers, they seemed less upset about the change than they were surprised they hadn’t heard about it.

Several teachers interviewed by The Echo said they and their colleagues generally supported the administration’s clarification on extra credit. 

As she had begun teaching at HSMSE last fall, Ms. Riedel had not implemented it: “I was still finding my footing, and I wasn’t really clear on what our extra credit policy was,” she said. She considered offering it for the food drive, but didn’t follow through after realizing the assignment might further harm those in vulnerable positions.

“If I have a student who is underperforming in my class because of stressors at home, and one of the stressors at home is that they don’t have access to food, then why should my extra credit be, ‘Bring in food’?”

Since the new policy was announced, Ms. Riedel has continued not to offer extra credit, noting that neither teachers nor students have been discussing it much. “It sort of became an out-of-sight, out-of-mind concept,” she said.

Ms. Walker is one of the teachers who did encourage donations to the food drive through extra credit, after repeated requests from students and offers from some colleagues. “Everybody had their own rules for it,” she said. Soon, though, she realized that not all of her students had equal abilities to contribute. 

She created an alternative extra credit option: to visit a museum and write about an exhibit’s relation to a theme addressed in one of her English classes. Ms. Walker’s favorite style of extra credit allows students “to see the whole world of cultural institutions, free things that they can get access to,” she said. “I always tie it back to the coursework in some way.”

Grades can be a contentious subject at a specialized high school. According to HSMSE’s school profile, class rank is not reported because “students who would excel in other settings may not distinguish themselves among their equally talented HSMSE peers.” From Aidana’s perspective, many of her classmates “are kind of desperate for extra credit,” which influenced her planning of the food drive. She described HSMSE’s environment as stressful and competitive.

In Etta’s experience, HSMSE has not felt particularly competitive; she has found the workload and pressure manageable. “I think there is some worry about grades, but I don’t really know what we can do to mitigate that, because that is kind of the reality of going to a specialized school,” she said.

“Our students are hard workers, and we want their grades to reflect that,” Ms. Riedel said. “I also think that there are a lot of lessons to be learned from working hard and not always getting the outcome you expected.” As teachers, she and Ms. Walker both thought overemphasizing grades can sacrifice the process of learning. 

However, without sweeping changes to the education system, grades remain an important metric of success, especially for college applications. They also tend to reflect the disparate extents of opportunities available to students of varying socioeconomic backgrounds. The new extra policy, as the administration and SLT have envisioned it, aims to grant all HSMSE students a more equal chance to excel.