To walk at graduation, all seniors must have their clock hours completed by tomorrow. Clock hours for all other grades and seniors who still owe them must complete them by May 10 to receive credit for the spring semester.
“So there’s probably three seniors that are at a really high risk of not being able to walk just because of clock hours,” district attendance officer Kyle Black said.
Clock hours are posted on signs in the hallways using student’s ID numbers. The IDs that are highlighted mean that the student is at a high risk of losing credit for the semester.
“Those are the ones that would have to go to summer school if they don’t make those up,” Black said.
Over 50 seniors have clock hours for the spring semester.
“They’re ready to be gone, so they don’t come to school as much,” Black said. “But the seniors have also made up more hours than anyone.”
Students can make up clock hours by attending before and after school tutoring sessions with one of their teachers, in the lecture hall before and after school with Black and by attending Saturday school.
“We switched from doing community service to strictly tutoring this year,” Black said. “The reason is because clock hours are to make up missed instruction, not to make up absences.”
Many students have clock hours due to illness or personal reasons.
“The hours just kind of accumulated because I would get sick and I would miss like two or three days at a time and that’d be fine, but then it would happen again, like two weeks later,” junior Maricela Guarnieri said. “So it just kept being a pattern.”
Guarnieri said that her amount of clock hours are not her proudest moment.
“I looked at it last week,” she said. “I didn’t know where they were posted, and they’re posted on the wall, and I saw it for like, the first time after lunch.”
Though Gaurnieri has missed several days of school, she still has passing grades in all of her classes.
“I am passing with, like, a 90 or something and they’re still going to try and not give me credit because I wasn’t here, but I’m passing the class,” she said.
Black said that attendance rates have increased by 2% this school year compared to last year.
“I think people are just more aware of what the attendance requirements are and they’re being more intentional about bringing notes,” he said.
Though notes allow students to have excused absences, some students are unable to get doctors notes.
“This is a poor town,” Gaurnieri said. “Not everyone in this town is privileged. A lot of people in the school don’t have insurance, so I don’t know how they expect us to get a doctor’s note. If we don’t have insurance, we can’t go to the doctors.”
