You wake up on a Monday morning with a scratchy throat and a stuffy nose. You get up with the hope that it’s just allergies, but deep down you know it. You’re sick. There’s no way you can go to school feeling as bad as you do, so you make your way back to your bed. But alas! You remember the new absence policy and get up again with a jolt. You can only miss five days, and if you’re late for the third time today, it counts as an absence. You’d better get going!
Every student was spoiled last year with the luxury of being able to miss as many days as they wanted, and we’re all still trying to adjust. In the previous years, we were able to miss nine days. That gave us a week to take off for that annual cold we all catch plus a few extra days for those unanticipated problems that arise without warning.
“I hate the new policy,” junior Sarah Catherine Kerr said. “When I get sick I need all the days I can get. Five is nowhere near enough.”
Many other students agree, including eleventh grader Matt Mogensen who says, “With the new policy I’m going to want to come to school as much as possible, even when I’m sick. That will just make me more stressed than I already am.”
The majority of students have made it clear in class that they are strongly against the new policy and feel that it puts more pressure on them to constantly show up when they shouldn’t. When kids come to school sick, they get other kids sick and cause stress. We don’t need any more stress around exam time than we already have, and the new absence policy isn’t going to help.