Community Service

I noticed quite a few changes since last year. Some of these changes are completely ridiculous.

The change I am referring to is the new Seminar arrangement. I already thought Seminar was boring and unproductive but now with the new "sessions" and community service arrangements it is downright ridiculous.

"The new arrangement was created to increase test scores, graduation rates and give teachers the opportunity to establish and develop relationships with students," said Kevin House, vice principal of El Dorado High School.

I am not happy in the least with the new arrangement. I was barely getting started with my work in the first session of seminar when they told us to go to the next one. then the exact same thing happened with my second session. By the time Seminar was over, I barely had any work done on my homework.

The biggest problem I have with new Seminar classes is the fact that students are being forced to do voluntary community service.

Dictionary.com defines community service in two ways:

1. Services volunteered by individuals or an organization to benefit a community or its institutions;

2. Similar work performed by law offenders to serve a sentence in lieu of or in addition to jail time;

Voluntary is defined as this:

1. done, made, brought about, undertaken, ect., of one's own accord or by free choice.

I certainly do not remember volunteering do do this work. The word community service has negative connotations. Community service is always associated with law breakers and never to law abiding citizens.

How can the school administration "force" students to participate in volunteer community service? I believe this goes against all the freedoms Americans are supposed to have.

The school is going above and beyond parental authority. School districts are always wanting parents to be more involved in the life of their children. This is an excellent opportunity, but the school district is taking that opportunity away.

Students already have a bad attitude during the community service, therefore they are not going to give it their all.

During the team meeting on Monday, August 18, 2008, I heard many students expressing their opinions with expressions such as "dumb," "stupid," "a waste of time," and other things that wouldn't be newspaper appropriate.

In the United States we are lucky enough to have freedom of choice, or so we thought. Obviously we do not have the freedom to choose if we want to do community service.

Kids usually have to do things that they don't like, (i.e. going to school) but this is supposed to be voluntary work.

The El Dorado School Board seems to be making a lot of decisions like this, (i.e. drug testing policy). The school board just needs to stop trying to go over the authority of the parents.

If the school is going to continue to try to "parent" me by teaching me morals ( community service), help me make good decisions ( drug testing policy) and give me "time outs" ( detention) then I am going to expect an allowance.

When I told my parents about this, they could not believe it. The told me to talk to the administration and double check to make sure I was right. It is that outrageous!

Some people think this is a fabulous idea, so kids can get more "involved" in the community. The problem is, people do no stop and think, is this illegal or unethical?

This is the same as the drug testing policy. People thought it was a wonderful, extraordinary idea, but two classes had to be removed from the policy because the school found out that they cannot withhold those classes from students, things I have said numerous times in letters to the Board of Education, administration and in editorials.

The fact is, it is wrong to force anyone to do volunteer