Let’s face it, school rules can be a major annoyance according to students, and to top it off, our school has introduced new rules and is reinforcing some old ones. To begin our 2016-2017 academic year, our administrators called all of the high school students to the chapel to announce the stricter enforcement of school regulations.

The new policies include:
• No food brought by parents to the office for anyone other than their child
• No delivering food to the office
• Taking attendance in chapel
• Getting called out of class

The main question students seem to have with the new/old guidelines is “why.” Many students believe that the reason we have the chapel attendance rule is because many students take advantage of that time to do other things. Assistant High School Principal, Mr. Bowline points out why we started to enforce these new rules.
“The chapel rules are brand new (as far as the consequences of missing chapel), and the reason we’re doing that is we are putting more emphasis on chapel, because we say chapel is the most important thing we do here and a lot of students are using that time to run errands and go off campus and do things. We really believe in chapel and we think everyone should be apart of chapel,” said Bowline.

The consequences for the chapel attendance go as followed:
• First three absences is a detention
• Five absences is a Saturday detention
• Seven absences result in a suspension.

Many students suppose the reason we are starting to enforce these rules is because it will improve our attendance.

“I think the consequences are a little strict, but I know that because they are stricter consequences, more people will follow the rules. For the chapel absences, people don’t want to get a detention for missing chapel,” said senior, Emily Barnes. As far as the other school policies go, getting called out of school by your parents is not acceptable anymore, unless for emergencies.

“You are supposed to get a note from your parent before you leave the house, turn it into the attendance ladies and they’ll write you a pass for that day and then when it’s time for that pass you just get up show the pass to your teacher and walk out, then sign out,” Bowline said.

The reason this policy was enforced is because teachers were constantly answering the phone to let students leave class and stopping class time to answer the phone.
“There were times where a minimum of 5 different phone calls would go into one classroom for different kids and it’s hard to get in the groove of teaching and get the point across when all of a sudden you have to keep stopping to go and answer the phone and then trying to start back up again and pick up right where you were is hard for teachers,” said Bowline.

Mr. Bowline, and other school administrators wanted to stop this problem from reoccurring.
However junior, Charles Dowell, has a different opinion on the change in the new system, “I think that it’s a lot of extra work that shouldn’t need to be done just to get called out of class,” said Dowell.

As for right now, it is to soon to tell whether or not these stricter rules are working to better our school, Bowline said, “I think it will help our school’s attendance out after someone gets caught on the consequences when they see that we are serious about it, that we do believe in kids being at chapel and we want them to make alternative choices.”