Next year’s report cards will most likely cease to print the letter N. Instead, E’s will fill the void of the ‘fail grade’. Although swapping letters seems like a minor change that most students could care less about, the truth is that the new letter grades will bring sweeping changes to Garfield.

As of now, any combination of A’s and N’s qualifies a student for a 4.0. Any student with a mixed report card of A’s and failing grades can easily calm horror-stricken parents with the reassuring evidence of a perfect GPA. “Doesn’t make much sense, does it?” asks Ken Courtney, a counselor at Garfield. “The whole reason for the N’s was because of the 2.0 grad requirement,” he explains. Since the N’s are not calculated into GPAs, more students have therefore been able to pass and graduate high school.

If you’re hearing about this illogical format for the first time, wait one moment before you jump for joy and stop attending your classes in order to receive N’s. There’s a catch. What most students do not realize is that “when a college sees an N, they say, ‘E’ and they recalculate the GPA,” Courtney brings to light. A transcript with 4 A’s and 2 N’s would be read by colleges as a 2.67, not a 4.0, and so forth. Also, students with any N’s on their transcript do not qualify as valedictorians.

The reason for the switch back to the E’s is because of these misconceptions. Although the change is not definite yet, the proposal is gathering much support among Garfield teachers. “[Students] are going to take things more seriously and be more concerned about falling behind,” states Jonathon Stever, one of Garfield’s science teachers. At this point, N’s are more beneficial to high school GPAs than C’s. Students with C’s sometimes start skipping class in order to lower their grade. “If we continue giving these kids N’s and they don’t really see any effect from it, we’ve set them up in life to fail,” says Stever.

If, indeed, the change to the E’s becomes official (the decision will be announced by the district at the end of the year), Garfield and other Seattle Public High Schools will have to rethink many of their current regulations. Will, for instance, Garfield’s 2.0 grad requirement remain intact?

To Stever, however, “the biggest question is sports.” Athletes must have higher than a 2.0 to participate and since E’s will be weighted as zeroes, more students might find themselves observing from the sidelines due to a lack of a high GPA.

For now, the question of how this policy and others will be affected is still unknown, but if you’re anxiously awaiting a verdict on the shift to E’s, Courtney predicts, “We’re pretty sure it’s going to happen.”