Flu School Policy

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Flu and School Policy Its winter time and along with everything that winter brings, it means that it's also flu season. For students, flu season is especially worse oftentimes due to the controversial problems that poorly constructed school policies present. What was originally created to benefit students has, over time, created a irritating quandary. Schools pretend to say that they encourage sick students to go home and get better. Yet, despite what schools say on paper, it actually benefits students to come to school when they are sick. Schools offer no incentive for students to stay home when they are ill and actually punish those who do. This is perceived by the prevalent “Two Day Policy” and by strict attendance rules in athletics. …show more content…

On paper, the Two Day Policy sounds like a good idea; it seems fair to give students two days to make up work for missing one day of school. But that’s not quite how the policy works in reality. Day one is the first day a student returns to school and the student receives the work from their instructor that they are required to make up. Day two is the day that that work is required to be turned in. If it isn’t in by the end of the school day, teachers will put in zeros in the grade book, the make up work will be considered late work, and it is up to the teacher’s own grading system to determine how much credit a student will receive for that work. Essentially, the way the Two Day Policy works out, students have one night, not two days, to complete all makeup work without receiving a penalty. That means making up 8 hours of instruction in one night on top of regularly assigned homework for that day. It is almost significantly better for a student to “tough it out” and go to school even when they very ill. And when sick students go to school, it only spreads the flu and gets other students and teachers sick. In order to help convince students to stay home when sick, schools should be more lenient when it comes to accepting makeup work. This would help encourage students to take time off to get healthy and still be able to complete their …show more content…

Students feel extremely pressured to come to school when they are sick in order to remain eligible for sports. In many schools, missing a couple of days due to being ill could cause a student athlete to be ruled ineligible for competing in games that week and in some cases could lose a starting spot for a couple of weeks. Another problem is that some coaches will trying to keep sick athletes in school and practice by telling them not to turn their backs’ on their teammates. When this happens, athletes will spread the flu to their peers, teammates, and other teams and schools. One way schools can fix this, is by changing their policy towards sick days in athletics. Schools can make it mandatory for sick athletes to stay home without there being consequences in their playing time. Athletes would still have to be completely responsible for making up any schoolwork they missed and they could still be ruled ineligible for competitions if they failed to get their make up work in. But instituting a change in policy regarding sick days in athletics could benefit the whole community. Student athletes that stay home when sick help prevent spreading the flu. Teams play better and win more often when they aren’t sick and the whole community feels overall better when it’s healthy. That’s why revisiting policy over sick days in high school athletics would help solve the

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