South Kingstown High School: Home of the Skippers?
“Skipping is fun and it’s become a hobby,” said SKHS senior Jake Maletta. Maletta says he has been skipping class since sophomore year.
The SKHS senior said he mainly skips because he gets bored in class.
“This year is so easy, to the point where I don’t feel like I need to be there to pass them,” Maletta said. “I won’t skip when I have to take a quiz or a test,” he added, “because those are important and crucial to my grade.”
To skip or not to skip? Many South Kingstown High School students agonize daily over this question.
Tom Hughes, another SKHS senior, said he also skips because he gets bored with his classes.
“I usually skip on average 10 classes a week, the last two every day.”
Hughes believes that there is nothing school can do to stop kids from skipping, including stricter rules. Kids, he says, will continue to break them.
When Hughes is not at school, he enjoys “taking the town by storm, going to 5 Guys, hanging out with Maletta, even studying for school, and preparing for upcoming tests.”
If a student at SKHS skips class, the cut class will result in an unexcused absence as well as an administrative intervention: detention or in school restriction. However, some schools around the state take more action towards the issue of skipping.
At Narragansett High School and Barrington High School, students who cut class are assigned a detention for each class cut and also receive an unexcused absence for the day. At North Kingstown High School, students that are caught skipping lose parking privileges and receive detention as well. Students from North Kingstown are also suspended from sports’ practices or games that fall on the day of the skipped class.
SKHS Principal Mr. Mezzanotte said he plans to study the skipping problem at the school, mainly to get a read on how big the issue is. The new principal said he also will be looking for the root causes to determine why so many kids are skipping.
As for this year, Mezzanotte said, “there will be no new policies and the same expectations will be expected.”
In School Restriction is a punishment for kids that skip class or disobey rules.
When asked about ISR, Hughes explained that the ISR room is “filled with desks; and has a teacher aid that supervises, but lacks wifi.”
Maletta expressed that usually in ISR he “completes the assignments within about an hour and a half, and then listens to music for the rest of the day.”
Maletta, has been in ISR multiple times, and claims that the only reason he goes is because his parents make him. Other times he skips the day he is assigned ISR because it never gets reassigned.
“I usually skip school the days I am assigned ISR, because it never gets reassigned, [its] like cheating the system” Hughes said. “Students would much rather spend a day at home instead of sitting in the ISR room being unproductive all day”.
“From the school’s perspective, I understand why ISR is in place:” Maletta said.
“They need to do something to deal with the kids who are skipping,”
Although many say it is a waste of time to most students, ISR is one of the few consequences the school has for skipping class, besides after school detention.
Although many kids get away with skipping, other students claim they are frustrated that these skippers don’t receive punishment.
Senior Dan Kelley strongly believes that “skipping is dumb and that there is a lot of work to make up.” Kelley also argues with Maletta and Hughes that ISR is ineffective, and that suspension doesn’t do anything, or teach anyone a lesson. Kelley even said he was involved in an incident last year where he was framed for skipping.
“All I was doing was sitting in the cafeteria during PARCC testing, when three kids left to go to CVS” Kelley said. “When they came back they were confronted by a teacher who decided to write them up. When it came time to give her their names, one student used my name instead of his own and I was the one to get in trouble!”
Kelley said he had to fight the write up and eventually got it rescinded.
“I felt hurt,” Kelley said, “especially because no one believed me and I think the school should’ve done more to defend me.”
Since the incident Kelley has decided that the school should take more action to stop these kids. “Taking away parking passes would certainly stop a lot of people.”
Overall, many students are divided on whether skipping is a major problem in our school. Senior Andrew Clegg confessed that “he would skip if he wouldn’t get caught.”
