Amelia

My name is Amelia and I am a senior. I am here to address increased mental health support for students and the effect the school’s absence policies have on students’ mental health.

Though our school emphasizes academics, at the same time, our school lacks the mental health support necessary for students to achieve those high expectations and follow through. For example, one of my friends graduated and, after getting into her dream school, she simply didn’t go because she felt like there wasn’t anything left to do—she achieved the goal the school had emphasized to her. The school didn’t give her the mental health resources to guide her to accept herself for who she was, and not be defined only by academic success. Like my friend, students often feel too burnt out to work—I see many of my classmates post about it on social media. I’ll start with my schedule: I go to school by 7:55 AM and get out at 2:30 PM. After school, I volunteer at the community health center and finish at 7 PM. By the time I’m done with homework, it’s already 10 PM. On days where I go to the gym to maintain my health, I wake up at 5 AM to do that. If I want to set aside personal time to do the things I enjoy, that leaves much less than 7 hours of sleep. Other students are similar: Many participate in extracurriculars, both because they enjoy them and because they’re important for the college applications the school emphasizes. Many work jobs, to support themselves and their families. Because of the workload and lack of support, we experience stress, insomnia, mental health problems, and anxiety. The school pushes us but isn’t there to catch us when we fall.

What the school does have is not enough. The mental health resources provided by the school’s health center are not well-publicized. Receiving services there is also an ordeal—you need to register, have insurance, and bring them insurance information.

This is all made worse by the school’s attendance policies. The attendance policy currently only allows 8 unexcused absences per semester—unexcused absences are absences without documentation. A lot of teens my age suffer depression and don’t have the courage to speak up about it and don’t have documentation to prove absences. Students could also have a lot of family issues going on. And, because the school puts a lot of pressure on us to apply to college immediately, many students take days off to focus on college applications, which are hard to balance with homework, projects, tests, and jobs.

The school should be more flexible with its attendance policies to give students room to breathe under its high expectations. Providing mental health days for students would help a lot. During COVID, they used to implement “what-I-need” days. What-I-need days were a chance for the teacher to catch up on work they need to grade and for students to catch up on work they need to finish or to take time for their mental health. I’ve used the what-I-need days both for getting work done, helping my family, and for sleeping. A change in attendance policies would show us that the school cares about the children, not just academically but as an individual.

But the school sends the opposite message: When you exceed 8 absences, you’re deemed as a student with attendance failure. You don’t get any credit for the class even though you might have a good grade for it. As a result of this, students don’t see a reason to try anymore. Having 8 absences is basically a pipeline to summer school. Students may also be temporarily suspended or held back for a year. If they don’t finish summer school, they don’t graduate.

Our high school claims to recognize that mental health is important but doesn’t take the necessary steps to follow that commitment. We want them to recognize that we’re people too, and that we need breaks.