Locked In: When You Need to Leave School

By Adam Marcello
June 8, 2023

Imagine receiving a call that changes your world in an instant: your parents have been involved in a car crash and are now in the hospital. Everything seems to come to a halt as you desperately try to find a way to visit them. You rush towards the main office asking permission to leave and visit your parents, only to find out that you can’t. Even after providing a proper email, evidence, and documentation, you are prevented from visiting your parents. With no other options left, you are forced to break the rules and skip school.

This is the reality many students face in Philadelphia. Students are not allowed to leave without anyone on their emergency contact list coming to check them out in person. Even a handwritten note or email won't excuse them from this policy. This poses a problem for many students who need to leave school early but can't for a wide variety of reasons, such as parents who can't afford to leave work to get their children out of school.

A worker in the Furness main office has offered to share some stories from their personal experience that helps to shed some light on this issue. From their experience, they said that there are cases where students who have medical appointments for themselves or who need to accompany their parents to the hospital and translate for them, but aren’t allowed to leave school. They also recounted a story where a pregnant student had a medical appointment but she was prohibited from leaving school. There are also cases where students have part-time jobs and are forced to leave school to go to work, earning money to help support their families. Older students such as seniors are able to leave early through a work release form. However, 9th graders do not have access to this release form and are not allowed to leave no matter the circumstances.

The strict district-wide rule hasn’t always been here, or at least enforced. According to the anonymous worker, the rule was in response to an incident where a 5-year-old girl was abducted from a Philadelphia elementary school by a stranger who posed as a relative and signed her out of school. However, they weren't sure whether the rule always existed but wasn't widely enforced, or whether the rule was created specifically in response to the incident.

While it is understandable that the district wants to prevent such incidents, simply banning students from leaving is not an effective solution. We need to find alternative ways for students to leave school without breaking the rules and risking disciplinary punishments. 

It's important to again emphasize that this issue is not the fault of Furness High School itself. The school cannot be blamed for the strict checkout policy as it is a district-wide rule. The assistant principal of Furness High School, Ms Burke, herself agrees that the current rules regarding early dismissals for students are too strict. According to her, there need to be more ways where students can leave early without breaking the rules.

It is worth noting that schools are not allowed to physically prevent students from leaving. The most they can do is report the situation to parents or assign detention. This explains the high rates of school skippers in places such as Furness. Personally, I support this approach as it feels ethically wrong to physically restrain students. Moreover, this also helps students who have legitimate reasons to leave school.

Overall, the school district should reconsider its strict early dismissal policies. While students' safety is important, there should be more flexibility and alternative solutions in place to accommodate students who need to leave school early. This would alleviate the burden on parents and provide a more reasonable approach to the issue.