On an average day at Grant High School, it’s not out of the ordinary to see small packs of students roaming the hallways. Some are equipped with hall passes. Others may have a free period. But there are also students, inevitably, who are skipping class.
Although many students consider skipping to be a harmless act of rebellion, the consequences can be significant. In recent years, frequent class cutters have faced disqualification from extracurricular activities if caught, and put their high school diplomas in jeopardy.
Two years ago, Portland Public Schools mandated an eight-period schedule at Grant and other high schools. “The intention was to limit class sizes,” says Megan Schlicker, a counselor at Grant. “Teachers were teaching more periods and so the class sizes would be smaller.”
But the schedule shift brought about a change in students. “The more free periods, the more they skip class,” Schlicker says.
When Grant was on a seven-period schedule, having a free period was a rarity for most. When the eight-period schedule came along, however, students were encouraged to have at least one free period. Ever since this change, it has been extremely difficult to differentiate kids in the hallway who have free periods from those skipping class.
While the administration requires passes for free periods, it didn’t take long for students to realize they would rarely be stopped and asked to show a pass in any place but the library. With holes in almost every Grant student’s schedule, the opportunity to skip class has widened.
For years, free periods were known as “Independent Study,” an incentive given solely to seniors with the intention of allowing them to get work done at their own pace. Now, these gaps in schedules have become somewhat of a burden on the administrative staff, school officials say.
Counselor Amanda Jordan, who was an intern at Grant last year and is now on staff, is an expert on high school scheduling. For her required action research project at the end of her internship, Jordan decided to study the correlation between having multiple free periods and skipping class.
She was prompted to take on the issue by her own experience in high school in New Jersey. There, she attended a public high school where skipping class had impeding consequences for students.
When she finished her project, most people were not surprised by the results. “The more free periods students have, the more unsuccessful they are academically, and the less connected they feel with the school,” Jordan says.
Jordan says students skip classes for a variety of reasons, but are prone to missing a class because of the awkward scheduling of the day or a friend with a free period who might lure them away. Friends not having a class isn’t the only reason students skip.
With block days four days a week, many students with free periods during those days don’t see the point of sticking around school for only one or two classes. For example, students often find themselves skipping class to help themselves to a longer lunch.
Katie Feller, a senior, is no stranger to skipping class. She estimates that she skips at least once a week, but her habit is a fairly new one. “I started skipping class in my junior year because I didn’t like my teacher,” Feller explains.
Nowadays, she finds herself skipping class – especially on Mondays – because of the shortened periods. Feller explains that some of her teachers don’t have much curriculum to cover during the shorter class periods, so missing class doesn’t cause her to fall behind.
Another reason for skipping is that some classes are boring or unproductive, Feller says. She has found it more useful to go home and do work as opposed to sit in class and do nothing.
Others say the opposite, that in most cases, making up the work can take more effort than just attending class in the first place. And many students skip class when they aren’t prepared to turn in an assignment.
Grant has taken measures to prevent skipping class. Last year, seniors with more than 24 absences in the second semester were barred from attending prom.
Milan Woods, a 2013 Grant graduate who attends Whatcom Community College in Bellingham, Wash., cut it close with 23 absences on her transcript. Woods, like most seniors, had multiple free periods. And she missed a lot of class.
On days with periods one through four, Woods was only required to come to school for two classes, and on days with periods five through eight, she only had to come for three. She admits she was more inclined to skip class due to her oddly placed free periods. She remembers thinking to herself: “I’ll just be late to the next one, I’ll just skip the next one.”
Woods was able to attend prom and graduate, and says that even if she had exceeded the absence limit, she thinks she could have negotiated with the administration and cut a deal.
So are Grant administrators doing enough? Though the school year is less than three months old, new principal Carol Campbell says she has made progress in the war on skipping class. During her time at Benson, Campbell set up a system that worked effectively in lowering the rate of unexcused absences.
Campbell and her administrative team at Benson made an effort at the end of each week to observe the list of absences over the last five days. An administrator would follow up with problem students by meeting with them about their attendance pattern and calling home.
According to Campbell, this system worked well and the unexcused absences began to slow. “It would start out at about 30 kids on this chronic attendance sheet and after two or three weeks of phone calling and intervening, the list is down to 10,” she says.
Campbell also established a study hall with room for 200 students during first period in the Benson cafeteria. Students were able to get food and then start their work rather than getting into trouble elsewhere.
She says it worked better than she had expected but is not something she will implement in the future. This is because there were too many kids and the environment didn’t promote learning, making the intended study hall a social hour.
Now at Grant, Campbell is working with vice principals Claudia Ramos-Tetz and Kristyn Westphal, along with school counselors, to enforce a new strategy. The startup process has been slow. With a large number of schedule changes, the staff spent much of the beginning of the school year trying to track down those with a free period and pinpoint students with a habit of missing class.
“If they got a schedule change and they ended up with an open period and they didn’t put a class in there, we’re finding them,” Campbell explains.
Rather than be penalized for skipping class, students are more likely to be approached by an administrator about their habits. If absences persist, a student will receive a call home and their attendance will be dealt with by a team: an administrator, the student and the parents.
Campbell has also said taking more courses helps with the issue of skipping class. “There’s fewer students that have what were open periods. Our goal was to get everybody with a full schedule,” Campbell says.
Administrators aim to put free periods either at the beginning or the end of the day, leaving students time to stay home or leave early. “Attendance is the number one thing that can have a negative impact on how a student does in a class,” Campbell says.
“I hope in the next few months, we are able to assist students with challenges that are impacting attendance. I would like to see more intervention strategies rather than increased discipline.” ♦
