Over the past few years, SHS used to have skip-a-final (chance) where students got to skip up to two finals for having perfect attendance and less than three tardies. SHS created this skip-a-final so the attendance rate would go up because attendance was one of the issues SHS was facing. However, this year the administrators have changed it to where students can only skip one final for non-tardies.

According to assistant principal Mrs. Amy Boone, the reason for the change is because of students coming to school sick due to not wanting to miss school days. Another reason was missing their family’s funeral. Students did those things because of wanting to be eligible to skip a final or two. Boone says it has become a big problem because students who comes to school sick would get other students sick as well, so they changed it to where students can only skip a final if they have no tardies.

“You can’t control if you’re sick or if you have a family emergency, but students can control when they’re here, if they get to class on time,” Boone said. “It’s always six minutes passing period and you can get your stuff done and get to class on time.”

There is an upside and downside to the change that is made according to senior Zai Sung. The upside is that students won’t be coming to school sick and getting all of us sick, Sung says. She says students that have family emergency won’t also be coming to school and missing out on what happens to the family. The downside to the change is that students can now only skip one final and they always have to be on time without any tardies, Sung says.

Sung prefers last year’s skip-a-final better than this year’s. She says it might not be good for other students that are always late to school or tardy to their class, but for her it is good because she is always on time and always eligible to skip two finals.

“Personally, I go to school everyday and I am not late to my class or tardy, so I don’t really like how they change it,” Sung said. “I used to be able to skip two finals, but now I can only skip one and for me two is always better than one.”