Posted: 4/6/06
New schedule for PHS seniors OK'd
By Joel Stottrup
If you see some Princeton High School seniors not in school on the last three days of this school year, days that they would normally be attending, don't be alarmed.
The School Board has decided PHS seniors should have that luxury after 13 years if they have completed all their requirements. The board made the decision to let such seniors have three days off at the end in order to avoid an uncomfortable situation.
The uncomfortable situation would possibly be for grandparents, aunts and uncles or any other relative coming from out of town to attend the graduation ceremony.
Normally, June 1 this year would have been the last day for PHS students to turn in assignments, which is the day before graduation.
Now because of School Board action on March 14, the seniors won't need to be in school during May 30-June 1 unless they need to take some finals or do some unfinished work to qualify for a diploma.
What was happening under the old schedule for seniors is that the information on who qualifies for graduation wasn't known until the last minute for some. That meant people scrambling to make changes in the graduation ceremony program at about 1:30 p.m. on graduation day, Princeton High School Principal Pete Olson told the board last week.
Meanwhile, grandparents coming in from out of town for the ceremony could be on their way only to find out their grandchild was not able to participate in the ceremony after all, said Olson.
By moving up the time for the seniors to turn in their work, it gives some extra time to check for errors in calculating graduation eligibility, Olson continued. It's a shame, he said, that after 13 years of preparing for graduation, that determining eligibility happens at 3 p.m. the day of graduation. Making such decisions at the last minute is "not very user friendly," he told the board.
Just before graduation last year, a student who staff members thought was going to be eligible to graduate, wasn't, and one they thought wasn't going to qualify, did.
Olson, contacted the day after the board meeting, was asked about any policy at PHS on who gets to participate in the ceremony. He said he didn't think there was a written policy but that if a student was significantly far off from meeting requirements they wouldn't graduate with their class. However, if the student only had to complete the requirements in just a few days, they could, he said.
(One piece of trivia on graduation ceremonies at PHS, is that the diploma is not handed out during commencement, just the blank diploma holder. Students pick up their diplomas later.)
Note that there will be no school May 29, four days before graduation, because May 29 is Memorial Day.
Olson said that he talked to administrators at many area schools about the topic. They either leave extra days open for seniors to get their graduation affairs in order like Princeton has now chosen to do, Olson said, or they just allow all seniors to be in the ceremony.
"No one comes up to Thursday [before graduation day] and then figures it out," he said.
Olson was asked about the rules on passing the state's basic skills tests to graduate, the tests that are first taken in the eighth grade. He answered that the tests still have to be passed to graduate. If a senior doesn't pass them, they have another chance in the summer following the graduation ceremony.
Board member Howard Vaillancourt asked Olson what any of the teachers would be doing if they only had seniors in their class when there are three days of no school at the end for seniors.
Olson answered that there would be enough extra work, from helping set up for graduation, to monitoring the school.
Board member Dan Whitcomb said he thought the way PHS has its graduation, all seniors have participated in the graduation ceremony even if they hadn't quite yet met the requirements.
Board chair Karen Metcalf said she didn't think the district has had a policy on this, but left it up to the principal and she said she agreed with Whitcomb's statement. Metcalf said she doesn't have a problem letting seniors out three days earlier who have all their work done.
Board member Deb Ulm said that in her 12 years on the board, she only remembered one time that a student was allowed to participate in the ceremony who didn't have all his requirements met.
Superintendent Mark Sleeper added that having fewer students in the high school in the three days before graduation will help reduce the problems sometimes seen in the past of students throwing paper and books about on the floor.
The students have done very well in the past two years of refraining from that behavior, Olson said.
Princeton Union-Eagle
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Princeton, MN 55371
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Fax: 763-389-1728