1st Place, News Story
2021-22, Division 3, News Writing
By Ainsley Newcomb & Aidan O’Malley
Focus
Midland HS
Although the school absence policy hadn’t been altered in 20 years, just a month before semester exams, Midland
Public Schools was urged to change the policy by district lawyers.
In the original student handbook the absence rule states that students have a 10-day maximum absence policy per period, per semester. However, if the student exceeds the 10-day maximum absences in a class, then they must take a final examination and earn a 70% or above to receive credit for the course. This is no longer in effect.
After being asked to update the absence policy, Principal Tiela Schurman and Assistant Principal Andrea Jozwiak discussed with other administrators from around the district on what needed to change. The part of the absence rule that was deemed a liability issue was correlating academic performance with attendance.
“Taking credit away from students if they’ve demonstrated they’ve earned the credit is not lawful,” Schurman said. “So to be proactive in perhaps being sued, our lawyers said we needed to get rid of this now before it’s too late.”
In his 39th as year as an educator, Midland Public Schools Superintendent Michael Sharrow has always valued attendance. Recently, Sharrow was appointed an officer to keep track of students’ attendance, especially seniors. This was done so that the district could catch attendance problems in students.
“The idea of having this extra help is to intervene earlier before they get to ten, and before it becomes an issue,” Sharrow said. “I’ve had to withhold students from graduating years before, and that is hard.”
The state of Michigan still enforces a truancy law to students from the age of nine to sixteen. However, school officials always work to find the cause of students issues who could be tried
for truancy to help students out. “Truancy has become an issue when students have given up on education, and that’s why we create alternative programs to try to keep kids engaged,” Sharrow said. “We are working on not just the punishment, but also what is
the root causing this problem.”
Not only is the new absence change possibly benefiting students with bad attendance, but also could make it harder to hold students accountable for their grades, worsening teachers’ fail rates.
“Schools take on this role trying to teach kids how to be productive citizens, how to be responsible, while teaching a curriculum. It’s this weird dance that teachers are trying to engage in,” Schurman said. “I think teachers need some support from administration to incentivize getting kids to school.”
English teacher Holly Mosher has not seen a drastic change in her students’ attendance since the new absence change, but with seniors in their last semester of high school, Mosher tries to encourage attendance in her classroom.
“I think attendance is extremely important,” Mosher said. “I think a lot of valuable things are done in the classroom, which involves
communicating with other students, and having discussions and group activities.”
Mosher also believes that attendance is important in preparing students for the real world after high school.
“When going away to college where you’re going to have to have more of the responsibility of making yourself go to class and making yourself do the work,” Mosher said. “Same with people who are entering the workforce. If you don’t show up to your job, then you won’t have one anymore.”
Math teacher Frankie Ardelean, believes that without requiring a 70 percent on final exams for exceeding the absence policy, it gives students more of a leeway with attendance moving forward.
“The students who are going to abuse that policy are probably the students who should be here,” Ardelean said. “I don’t think the new policy is benefiting the good students, but rather benefiting the skippers.”
Although attendance for students has more flexibility going into the last semester, Ardelean believes that academic performance can be well off without in person attendance, but that it should also be a reflection on the classes that students are taking.
“Obviously you can learn without being here,” Ardelean said. “However, if you can skip two weeks of a class and still be doing well, it should be a reflection on you and the level you are challenging yourself.”
Ardelean encourages attendance amongst students, not just for academic purposes, but also to be surrounded by peers throughout high school, especially for seniors their last semester of high school.
“This is your victory lap,” Ardelean said. “Do you want to finish your victory lap at home, or do you want to finish it at school?”
NW-02. News Story
News stories should report but not interpret events that have news value and timeliness to the publication’s readers. Advance stories may be included in this category; follow-up stories should be submitted in NW-03. Submit a PDF of the print page(s) on which the story was published or the URL to the story on an online news site.
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