To Skip Or Not To Skip?

To Skip Or Not To Skip?

Kyla Diei, Destini Grant

High school: a rough time in a teenager’s life. There’s so much pressure weighing on students, especially seniors. It can be a real struggle juggling college applications, college tours, senior fees, and tests on top of the regular workload seniors already endure everyday. As seniors, sometimes we just need a break to hangout with our peers and have fun or just relax. Is skipping school a few days during one’s senior year warranted or not? 

We decided to survey almost 50 of our peers ranging from freshmen to seniors about their thoughts on Senior Skip day and how frequently students should have them. The answers ranged from “I don’t care” to “I think they’re awesome because seniors have a lot of anxiety about the future. It’s like a reward that you get for making it through freshman, sophomore, and junior year.” 

When asked if seniors should be allowed to have skip days, 92.9 percent answered yes. 88.1 percent said senior skip days should be approved by the administration and when asked how many senior skip days should be permitted in a year, 40.5 percent answered two, 35.7 percent answered 4, 16.7 percent answered three and 7.1 percent answered one. According to the results we got, the majority of students are all for senior skip days.

We figured correctly that the administration and faculty would feel differently. 

Assistant Principals Mr. Runnion and Mrs. Thaxton agree that there is no such thing as Senior Skip day. Mr. Runnion continued, “It is not school-sponsored because if anything bad were to happen, the school would be held accountable.” Ms. Dupree, a math teacher, stated, “There’s nothing wrong with having a skip day as long as it’s well organized and meaningful. I don’t approve of the seniors sitting home and watching Netflix though.” Mrs. Panagos, the multimedia and publications teacher, said, “I’m not sure that dealing with make-up work and missed class time is actually lessening student stress.” Officer Dawe went as far as to say “what makes [senior skip day] fun is that it doesn’t exist.” As you can see, the faculty has a different attitude about senior skip days. 

We might have to agree to disagree.