As many students know, there has been new administration implemented at SLVHS this year, however, many do not know that there is a new detention policy put together by Mr. Hearn, the vice principal, and Mr. Calden, the principal. The new policy was created to help the administration and the students with time management.
Mr. Hearn stated that the old policy was problematic, because at the end of the year everyone was trying to make up detention “hours” accumulated throughout the year. “Students accumulate hours that they then don’t have time to work off or don’t try to work off in a timely manner because they don’t really get punished in a timely manner,” Hearn stated. Many believed that this policy lead many students to not follow procedure and rules crucial to the SLVHS community for belief that they would not get in trouble for their actions.
With the new policy in place, students must serve the detention within a timely manner. Students who cut class are to serve their detentions either for four days during lunch or two after school detentions to make up the two hour class that was cut. If students do extracurricular activity at the school, you may not attend the activity until you start and finish serving the hours you owe.
The main reason for the new detention policies is that Mr. Hearn and Mr. Calden do not want students accumulating detention hours. Mr. Hearn stated he did not want, “[students] trying to catch up at the end of the semester all at once.”
Last school year with the Mrs. Van Putten former principal and Mrs. Billings former vice principal combo, grade drops were a common thing for the people that did n
ot complete all of his or her detention hours.
Mrs. Billings sent out letters to the students as to why their grades were dropped. The letter stated that your grade will be dropped if you did not make up hours or it stated that your grade had already been dropped.
This brought up a bit of controversy of legality because it did not seem right. The grade drops she performed were only legal on one circumstance, if the teacher of the course agreed, then the grade drop was legal to be performed. This still sat uneasy with students due to its close proximity to legal issues, and the new policy implemented this year hopes to ease those worries with a system far from legality concerns.
By Nathan Moore
The Claw 