JAY – School Committee members voted Monday to authorize Jay High School Principal Peter Brown to form a committee to develop quality, nontraditional instruction days on three Saturdays for seniors. The sessions would help make up for school cancellations due to snowstorms.
A majority of the 85 students would have to attend the special three-hour sessions for them to count as instructional days, Superintendent Robert Wall said. Students would be responsible for their own transportation.
Wall has applied for a waiver to cover the two remaining days seniors need to meet the 170 instruction days as required by state law.
More than 20 seniors asked the School Committee last week if they could make up the days during April vacation or Saturdays instead of moving the graduation date from June 5 to June 12.
Senior Jaclyn Lautz and fellow students called a class meeting and surveyed 67 students who attended. Forty-five of those students said they would be willing to attend class for a few Saturdays, according to the survey.
Thirty-four students said they had made previous plans for April vacation. Fifty-four students said they would be willing to do community service on a Saturday, if considered a school day.
Fifty-nine students said family members had plane tickets or had taken the June 5 weekend off to attend graduation. Sixty-six of the students surveyed said they would be disappointed if graduation was changed to June 12.
Brown said the committee would consist of a board member, a guidance counselor, a teacher, several students and the superintendent, who wanted to participate.
The decisions for the weekend programs wouldn’t be made until the committee brainstormed ideas. Some possible suggestions include bringing in a college student to talk about the transition from high school student to the freshman of college and what to avoid doing the first year. Another idea was to do clean up the track area and plant flowers as part of the Student Council’s beautification program. Another idea, he said, was calling on University of Maine at Farmington students to see if they would conduct team-building exercises with seniors like they did with juniors in January.
“Our emphasis is going to be on making those quality days,” Wall said.
Of the Saturdays before graduation, Wall said, some fall during vacation and one is the day of the prom.
Brown asked Wall if makeup days might have to happen on Sundays.
Wall said, “Yes.”
“This was a very positive process,” parent Michelle St. Jean said of students working with the board, teachers, administrators and fellow students.
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