ORANGE : School Infraction Penalties Changed

For students at El Modena High School in Orange, playing hooky used to mean spending a Saturday in detention hall. And if a student ditched the weekend punishment, he or she could be suspended for a day--meaning that one truant day resulted in another day out of class.

But this year, students who skip school are not punished with suspensions. Instead, they are given demerits that can shut them out of social events such as school dances and football, even graduation.

“The premise is that the kids should be responsible for themselves,” said El Modena Assistant Principal Walter Hess. “We give everybody 100 merits the first year they come here. From then on, any time you violate the rules . . . by excessive tardiness, truancy, disrupting class, you are assigned detentions.”

Each time a student fails to show up for his or her detention hour, he or she loses two merits. When a student slips below 90 merits, he or she is barred from attending social functions. If he or she falls below 86 merits, extra-curricular activities are out. And any student with less than 95 merits is not allowed to graduate until the marks have been made up.

“When we first started out, (the students) didn’t think we were very serious about it--not until the first big dance, when the ineligible students weren’t allowed to buy tickets,” Hess said. “We had a lot of shocked kids the first time.”

Students can earn back merits by volunteering time for teacher projects or cleaning up the campus. On average, about 30 students a day attend the detention sessions, and nine or 10 clean up the school grounds or work with teachers, Hess said. Currently, 172 out of the school’s 1,710 students are either on social probation (below 90 merits) or ineligible for all extracurricular activities (below 86 merits).

Although students who violate more serious school rules, including those against possession of drugs, alcohol or weapons, still face suspension or expulsion, Hess believes the program is accomplishing its goals.

“It’s been pretty successful,” he said. “We always have a number of students who could care less. . . . I think the people who it’s hitting is the average Joe Q who just wants to graduate and leave.”

Hess pointed out that statistics from the first semester show Orange high schools averaged about 225 days of suspension per school. El Modena, however, had only 105 total days of suspension during the first semester.