The skipping epidemic at Nashua North

The skipping epidemic at Nashua North

by Joshua Bozek

Nashua North highschool has seen a high percent of their students skipping classes for a couple of years now, but why is this happening?

From the perspectives of teachers it's a mystery they wish they didn't have to worry about. But they even have their own personal reasons as to why they think students skip their classes. Between the students and teachers they give different answers as to why they think kids skip classes, but in the end it all ties together into one simple word.

Boredom, a big increase in younger people today. With so many different options of finding work or going to college right after highschool, a lot of students have stopped trying in highschool because they feel as if they do not need a highschool education. One of the AP’s at nashua north high school Mrs. Closs said, “we hold kids here till they are eighteen and a lot of kids don't want to engage in traditional highschool, which I get and respect.”

When asking students what they believe the main reason why students skip it was a clear and decisive answer from everyone. Either a lack of friends or boredom in their classes that they are in, senior basketball/track athlete Gavin Theriault had this for his reasoning as to why he might skip class “if i was to be skipping Eblock it's just, my Eblocks not fun”.

Senior Selena Doyle had her own opinion on why she believes kids skip class: “I think kids skip because school is really really boring, and you can pass classes without being in them so people just don't go.”

Mr. Watkins, a teacher at Nashua North said, “it's a nightmare i hate it” every time he has to go out on eblock hall duty. He says it's because “kids don't respect us”.

It seems the further the interviews got with more people, that these little problems have helped lead to this mass pandemic of people skipping at nashua North highschool.

People have expressed ways that they have been fighting this problem and others expressed ways how we could be solving this problem.

Teacher Lisa Yates had some ideas to how to combat the issue, “i have a multi tiered plan, i think we need to offer students the opportunity to experience our classes we have all these early release days, kids could come around and see what this class is and what that class is, how they like the teacher all that kind of stuff, there's no reason why we can't do that”.

Yates, a well respected teacher among the students and staff at Nashua North, also says she feels “demoralized” when she sees kids skip their classes.

Principal at nashua north high school Mr. Burns has his own theories as to why kids may fall into the hole of skipping “I think sometimes they find themselves falling too far behind to get caught up and they use it as a way to escape, sometimes school isn't their thing.”

Mrs. Closs and Mr. Massey, both North APs stated that they do this to fight the skipping epidemic: “we print cutlists every single day that have the name of kids that miss blocks, we ask teachers to write kids up for skipping, after that we assign a detention and then its progressive discipline from there.”

This problem does not just start end at nashua north highschool. “Nationwide, the rate of chronic absenteeism — defined as missing at least 10% of school days, or 18 in a year — nearly doubled between 2018-19 and 2021-22, to 28% of students” this study was conducted by Thomas Dee, a professor of education at Stanford.

Changes have to happen but as of now those changes are not determined and skipping will continue to be an epidemic for a while.