Senior privileges could look very different next school year
Chances are low that students will have an early dismissal but, admin is looking at new options.
Starting even before their freshman year, high schoolers dream about their senior year — their last first day of high school, their last homecoming week, their final senior prom, planning for college, getting ready for graduation, and looking forward to enjoying senior privileges. These privileges have been a way to reward seniors for all their hard work in the past four years while also showing a sense of trust from staff to spend their time wisely.
Currently, during fourth quarter, gives seniors a pass to leave school at 3:05 pm instead of 3:25 pm, allowing them to choose to use this pass or to stay during that time to attend Bison Time or AAA. Over the course of fourth quarter, that adds up to nearly 800 minutes of freedom.
With the dramatic change in the school schedule next year, Bison Time and AAA will be taken out, and much of what used to be AAA time will be shifted to the morning. Advisory (from 10:14 am – 10:44 am on Mondays and Fridays) and Support Time (from 10:12 am – 10:47 am on Tuesdays and Thursdays) mean that seniors won’t be leaving early next year. These changes make no room for 20 minutes at the end of the school day for seniors to leave early. This poses the question for soon-to-be-seniors, “What will we have for senior privileges, if anything at all, or will they just go away?”
According to Principal Mark Mischke, there will be some type of senior privileges next year, however the admin team isn’t quite sure what they will be yet.
“As far as senior privileges, we don’t have a specific plan, yet,” Mischke said. “We have talked about at lot of ideas. I want to be able to meet with next year’s seniors in the fall and do a little idea generating with them because great ideas come from our students.”
One big part of senior privileges he addressed was wanting student input on the changes next year.
“No matter what, I want to get input from seniors in the fall. So when we do our senior meeting the first week one of the things I’m going to ask them is to give some input so we can try to capture as best as possible, a quality senior privilege opportunity,” Mischke said.
Mischke said that getting student input this situation tries to reflect the mission statement “Doing What’s Best For Kids.”
Quite a bit of research has gone into decision making of what next year’s senior privileges will look like. Admin have even explored what other schools are doing in regards to senior privileges, to do what is best for our seniors.
“There are a ton of different things that schools are doing so that’s where we are doing our research right now,” Mischke said.
So, juniors soon-to-be-seniors rest assured, you will have some type of senior privileges next year, but it may not look the same as this year’s.
“They will have something,” Mischke said. “When I say for sure they will have it, I don’t want [students]to think that it means early release. It won’t necessarily be an early release from their classes, because it is different at the end of the day. There will be something, and it will be a lot of creation next year, because it’s the first year any time an opportunity comes up. [We want to say,] ”‘Okay if we have the chance to change something how do we do it well?’”
Photo by Mackenzie Myrkle
