Almost a quarter of seniors don't have enough SSL to graduate at our HS

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Nothing like mandatory “volunteer” hours, amiright?

Or ones you have to pay to get. My kid’s friends get a lot of SSL hours by serving as volunteer at races for their own paid summer swim team.

Yet some parents say it’s so “easy” to get hours without effort without recognizing their own privilege made it easy and a lot of MCPS kids don’t have the same access to the easy SSL options (which is why you see 25 pct of kids in danger of not graduating due to this.)

My father grew up poor and was horrified by the SSL requirement. He got up a sunrise every day to work before school, and came home after school to work until bed every day (except for homework but I think he often did that while at work). He said he never could have done 75 hours of volunteering, as the hours didn’t exist. As an adult, he volunteered a ton. I really doubt that there’s much connection between these mandated SSL requirements and future volunteerism.

+1 These comments of “it’s effortless my son did by volunteering during the summer as CIT at the camp where we paid to send him all through elementary school” are tone deaf. Some kids are watching siblings or working actually paying jobs during the summer that don’t come with SSL. I would suspect most MCPS kids aren’t going to any summer camp because of the $$.

^^This^^. MCPS should create an SSL category for students who watch their siblings after school and who work at paying jobs to help support their families.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Nothing like mandatory “volunteer” hours, amiright?

Or ones you have to pay to get. My kid’s friends get a lot of SSL hours by serving as volunteer at races for their own paid summer swim team.

Yet some parents say it’s so “easy” to get hours without effort without recognizing their own privilege made it easy and a lot of MCPS kids don’t have the same access to the easy SSL options (which is why you see 25 pct of kids in danger of not graduating due to this.)

My father grew up poor and was horrified by the SSL requirement. He got up a sunrise every day to work before school, and came home after school to work until bed every day (except for homework but I think he often did that while at work). He said he never could have done 75 hours of volunteering, as the hours didn’t exist. As an adult, he volunteered a ton. I really doubt that there’s much connection between these mandated SSL requirements and future volunteerism.

+1 These comments of “it’s effortless my son did by volunteering during the summer as CIT at the camp where we paid to send him all through elementary school” are tone deaf. Some kids are watching siblings or working actually paying jobs during the summer that don’t come with SSL. I would suspect most MCPS kids aren’t going to any summer camp because of the $$.

^^This^^. MCPS should create an SSL category for students who watch their siblings after school and who work at paying jobs to help support their families.

MCPS offers SSL activities during the school day for these kids, and other kids.

[Anonymous]

I haven’t read all these comments but have we come to the conclusion yet that requiring service hours is wrong headed and destined to fail (be gamed, by parents paying for their children to be CITs, or to be wildly unfair for kids who already provide a service to their community by babysitting their siblings or working?). I hope so. You cannot mandate good works and the idea of the behemoth that is MCPS trying to do just that is laughable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I haven’t read all these comments but have we come to the conclusion yet that requiring service hours is wrong headed and destined to fail (be gamed, by parents paying for their children to be CITs, or to be wildly unfair for kids who already provide a service to their community by babysitting their siblings or working?). I hope so. You cannot mandate good works and the idea of the behemoth that is MCPS trying to do just that is laughable.

Agreed. I think most people recognize that good works can be done under SSL, but that many kids are just using parental resources to game the requirement and that there are hours being handed out for meaningless activities or activities that are already being done in school.

If nothing else, it’s shameful that kids aren’t graduating due to this requirement.

[Anonymous]

I'd like to know how many kids truly don't graduate over SSL hours. It seems they manage to find away past all the academic requirements. It would be surprising to me if there is not some kind of counselor over ride used on June

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'd like to know how many kids truly don't graduate over SSL hours. It seems they manage to find away past all the academic requirements. It would be surprising to me if there is not some kind of counselor over ride used on June

I don’t think those data are public. The OP of this thread had the 25 pct number. Another person on this thread who said they were a teacher, said it was 10 pct at their school. Either way that’s a lot of kids at danger of not graduating for a flawed “service” requirement.