Meeting Story Exercise: Students Will Serve Saturday Detentions If New Policy Is Passed

            Students with disciplinary problems will have to return to school on Saturday mornings in a new policy proposed by a member of the Portsmouth School Board last night. The policy was imposed primarily to discourage and punish students who are caught smoking on school property.

In an effort to reduce in-house suspensions during which students miss classwork, Tim Steele, a School Board member proposed this policy requiring students to instead serve detention from 8 a.m. to noon on several weekends during the year.

In-house suspensions are given to students caught smoking inside or outside of Portsmouth High School, during which time students are required to miss class and not make up work. “I just want to keep students from smoking in the high school bathrooms. There are other problems, but smoking is by far the biggest one.”

Steele said that the new program would be an improvement because students would not miss time in the classroom. “I know this isn’t good news for parents, but I hope the threat of Saturday classes will make the students think twice before breaking the school rules.”

One of the parents in opposition to the new policy was Peggy Bacon. “I work six days a week – including Saturday morning – and it’s bad enough to get my son off to school Monday through Friday. Why should I have to worry about Saturday as well?”

Bacon was opposed to the policy not only because of the inconvenience for families like her own, but also because of the budget. Steele said that the weekend sessions would require an allocation of about $3,000 per year for staffing.

“I just don’t think it’s going to make any difference, and the parents are going to pay for it – in higher taxes as well as in ruined Saturdays,” said Bacon.

Students were also against the proposed rule. Lisa Gallagher, a high school senior and one of five students in attendance, spoke against Steele’s proposition. “In 12 years of school I’ve never served a detention, and I don’t intend to. But I don’t like this idea. I think it’s just being done to make life easier for the faculty, so they don’t have to deal with detentions during the week.”

But Bob Farley, a Portsmouth resident, said that he liked the idea. “Parents can whine all they want about this, but maybe it’s time parents in America were made to take a little responsibility for their kids,” he said. “Maybe if they have to miss a few Saturday morning cartoons they’ll start wising up.”

After the policy was discussed for a half hour, the board voted and decided to postpone the issue until its next meeting on March 7,at which date Steele was told to have figures on in-school detentions for this school year.