Portsmouth High School students who get in trouble during the school week may soon find themselves back at school on Saturday mornings if the Portsmouth School Board gets their way.
The new rule, suggested by Board member Tim Steele at last night’s School Board meeting, would require any student with disciplinary problems during the week to attend Saturday morning sessions from 8 a.m. until noon. The Saturday sessions would run several weekends during the year.
Steele’s proposal was met with mixed reactions from the crowd.
Peggy Bacon, a parent, was irritated with Steele’s motion. “I work six days a week – including Saturday morning – and it’s bad enough to get my son off to school Monday through Friday,” Bacon said. “Why should I have to worry about Saturday as well?”
Lisa Gallagher, a senior at Portsmouth High, spoke out against the proposal as well. “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. Anyway, what if someone skips the session? What are they going to do, make them stay all weekend?”
Steele explained that any student who skips the Saturday sessions would not be allowed to return to school until they served their detention.
The new disciplinary measure was proposed in the hopes of reducing the number of in-house suspensions, Steele said. Under the current rule, any student caught smoking inside of outside of the school is automatically given an in-house suspension. During the 1995 school year, 154 students received in-house suspensions.
According to Steele, students are not allowed to make up class work they miss during in-house suspensions. With the new program, students would miss no class time.
“I know this isn’t good news for parents, but I hope the threat of Saturday classes will make the students think twice before breaking the school rules,” Steele said.
Steele’s proposal had at least one supporter in Bob Farley of 64 Elm St. “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,” Farley said. “That’s the whole problem – parents aren’t teaching their kids any discipline, so the kids have no respect for rules. Maybe if they have to miss a few Saturday morning cartoons they’ll start wising up.”
After discussing the issue for about half an hour, the board voted 5-3 (with one member abstaining) to table the issue until their next meeting on March 7th. At that time, Steele is required to return with figures on in-school detentions for the current school year.
Also of interest to students and parents was Superintendent of Schools Nathan Greenberg's administrative report regarding the School Department’s efforts to pass a $21 million budget for the next school year. The proposed budget is 5.5% larger than the current budget, Greenberg said. The board did not spend much time discussing this matter.
(class assignment)
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