Portsmouth, NH- The Friday afternoon bell will no longer offer relief to misbehaving students if a new policy requiring students with disciplinary problems to serve a 4 hour session on Saturday mornings is passed for the Portsmouth school district.
School Board member Tim Steele said the new measure will reduce the number of in-house suspensions which are given automatically to Portsmouth High School students.
“It’s bad enough to get my son off to school Monday through Friday,” said Peggy Bacon, a parent who works six days a week, including Saturday mornings, and dislikes the proposal because of the additional time commitment.
“Why should I have to worry about Saturday as well?” Bacon said.
Bacon believes that the Saturday sessions won’t make a difference and will only end up causing the parents to pay “in higher taxes as well as ruined Saturdays.”
“I know this isn’t good news for parents,” Steele said. “But I hope the threat of Saturday classes will make students think twice before breaking the school rules.”
Steele proposed the new policy to cut down on in-house suspensions since students aren’t allowed to make up the class work missed during the suspensions. The Saturday sessions means students will miss no class time and therefore stay on top of their assignments.
“Parents can whine all they want about this, but maybe it’s time parents in America were made to take a little responsibility for their kids, said Bob Farley, a Portsmouth resident in favor of the new policy.
“Maybe if they have to miss a few Saturday morning cartoons they’ll start wising up,” Farley said.
Along with concerned parents and community members, five high school students attended the meeting, including senior Lisa Gallagher.
“I think it’s just being done to make life easier for the faculty, so they don’t have to deal with detentions during the week,” said Gallagher, who has not served a detention in her 12 years of schooling.
“What if someone skips the session?” Gallagher asked. “What are they going to do, make them stay all weekend?”
Steele responded by explaining that if a student misses a Saturday session, he or she cannot return to school until the session is served, impacting the student’s class work and grades.
While smoking is not the only discipline problem at the school, it’s one of the worst according to Steele.
“I just want to keep students from smoking in the high school bathrooms,” Steele said.
Despite the strong opinions voiced, the board voted to hold the issue until the next meeting where Steele was instructed to return with figures on in-school detention rates for the current school year.
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