<p>When my S was a senior (2005), they cleverly chose May 5 as their SSD (05-05-05). It was definitely a non sanctioned event by the admisnistration but the teachers know it’s a tradition and didn’t retaliate with zeros. </p>
<p>That date happened to fall on the Thurs. before the Jr/Sr. prom. We got a recorded message from the school on the night of 050505 (while the kids were finishing off their day of fun at an outdoor Alan Jackson concert) stating that anyone missing the Thurs/Fri. before the prom would have to bring in an excuse from their parents or they would not be admitted to the prom on Sat!!!
S’s Jr. girlfriend called him at the concert in a state of panic! So of course I had to send a note in saying he was sick that day. Much time, effort and planning had been spent on the prom. There was no way we were gonna let him miss the prom over a last minute unadvertised threat by the school admin.</p>
<p>My school called senior skip day an unexcused absence unless you had a note. It was the Monday after prom and a lot of my class did skip. I got really sick and spent the day in the ER so I actually had a note. I made it all the way to school before having to call my dad to get me over this ongoing problem of migraines and vomiting. My classmates thought I had skipped, but I was having way less fun.</p>
<p>Yeah, the reason why parents lie for their kids is because of the draconian punishments meted out by some teachers for such an innocent tradition as ‘skip day.’ My son went in a couple periods late to skip day (so as to be eligible for sports) and one of his teachers gave a ‘participation’ grade for the day. Not that he regularly gives participation grades, but he just decided to that day. He told the class that this grade probably wouldn’t really help their grades all that much but it surely would hurt the grades of those who were absent. </p>
<p>At the very beginning of my kids’ middle school career, we had a family reunion event over the weekend that only comes once in a lifetime. We wouldn’t be returning on Sunday/Monday until around 2 or 3 AM, so I asked the office ahead of time how it would be handled if the kids didn’t return to school until later in the day on Monday. They basically told me to lie and say they were sick, otherwise they wouldn’t be permitted to make up their work that day and therefore receive zeros. So much for honesty.</p>
<p>I could see it if kids regularly miss tons of days, but my kids maybe miss a couple days per semester. There really ought to be a way for parents to give the “OK” for one or two “excused” absenses per year, whether or not a student is sick. It gets to feel like some teachers are on a power trip or something.</p>
<p>As a followup- this skip day was planned on a Monday following senior night (an almost-all night school event at a local theme park) on Friday night, then Prom on Saturday night. The whole reason the kids planned this day was because none of the teachers assigned anything over the weekend. Suddenly teachers were coming up with unannounced ‘pop’ quizzes on Monday when they realized it was skip day. I think those teachers were downright ‘mean.’ I am disappointed in the ending to what should be a good feeling for the seniors; instead they feel distrust and hostility</p>
<p>Back in the Pleistocene, we had Senior Ditch Day. The school looked the other way. We did senior pranks. The principal had his picture taken near one of them. When did school administrators develop such an advanced case of Clenched Sphincter?</p>
<p>My son’s high school has already sent a letter to parents saying that anyone pulling a senior prank on campus would be expelled. No tolerance, no exceptions. I am so glad he’s getting out of there.</p>
<p>Weenie, the trick is to make it a humorous, interesting prank, and not just malicious vandalism. I really like the prank you describe. No permanent harm, no foul.</p>
<p>I happened to go to the same high school as my parents. In my father’s day the senior class inflated a truck inner tube and somehow put it on top of the spire on the 65-foot-tall bell tower. The school had to get a trained climber to get it down. The students had put it up with a pair of helium weather balloons and some ropes. That’s a prank. In my day, the senior class took a retired mascot costume, filled it with concrete, and mounted it on rebar hammered into the grass in the quad. A good prank. Setting the school on fire would be vandalism. </p>
<p>I think it’s OK to officially frown on pranks while effectively ignoring them, but I don’t understand the thought process that leads to “get out of line even a little, and you are expelled.”</p>
<p>Senior pranks at our school…covering the floor of the band room with 100’s of paper cups filled with water, painting over all the numbers on parking spaces in the student parking lot and painting 2005 on every space, locking the entrance to the student parking lot with a chain and padlock a couple of weeks ago so no students could get in, the fire dept. was called, everybody was late to class. My Jr. S thought it was marvelous. In '05 the administration threatened to cancel the Senior breakfast and Senior Picnic if all pranks didn’t stop…he was no fun…he’s no longer the Principal either, lol.</p>
<p>Painting over numbers = maybe funny – probably vandalism unless the class president volunteered seniors to repaint the numbers</p>
<p>Locking parking lot = funny (why did they call the fire dept? I’d have called Ace Hardware) If it was just the student parking lot, and I were the principal, I would be tempted to just ignore it and expect all students to be on time. It would get fixed pretty soon.</p>
<p>my school has an official senior skip day the day after prom. nobody has to get called in or anything, the seniors are just automatically excused and not expected to be there.</p>
<p>my school did it on the 100th day of school. when i was a senior we actually wound up having a snow day on that day and then they ‘rescheduled’ skip day but very few people actually skipped… i dont think everyone knew about the rescheduling.</p>
<p>my sister skipped this year for hers, and i took off work that day and hung out with her.</p>
<p>When I was a senior, the headmaster brought us together and explained that we couldn’t have a skip day that year due to other days we were missing and the amount of work teachers still had to cover. Students respected this once teachers made it clear that they would look down on us as a class for acting otherwise; at a small school, this somehow did the trick.</p>
<p>I know that in Washington, the schools receive their state money according to the number of days the students attend school, and that unexcused absences do not count as attendance. Thus, a senior skip day can cost the school quite a bit of state funding.</p>
<p>At the hs my D attended, Senior Ditch Day is organized by the school, and busses pick up the kids at school for a day at Disneyland, it’s been the same since the first graduating class in 1986. Maybe they classify it as a “field trip” so they don’t lose funding? Either way, nearly every kid goes.</p>
<p>All but 5 of the kids ditched. My son didn’t, and I sincerely hope he got some credit for being in class. Senioritus has set in, and he could use some extra points…</p>
<p>Our senior skip day was Feb 6th (02/06, as close to 2006 as we could get). However, there were so many rumors of other days that many were confused, so many came to school on that day and the other “skip” days. I went to school that day because I had already missed about 5 days for college visits and actual sick days, and was going to miss another in May for my sis’s college graduation, so my mom said no. She never let me or my sis skip school unless we were really sick or we had some event to be at. </p>
<p>Because someone got hurt during the c/o 2002 or 2003 prank of putting something (can’t remember what) on the gym roof during the night, we were told that anyone who decided to pull a prank anyway would not be able to walk at graduation.</p>
<p>I’m always interested in hearing about creative senior pranks, though even innocuous ones aren’t tolerated at our high school. Among the amusing ones recent senior classes have done here: several kids rode their parents’ lawn mowers to school one weekend and mowed clever and/or rude sayings into the school lawn; another year, several thousand plastic forks were implanted in one section of the yard.</p>
<p>A more ambitious prank that cost the school custodial overtime and could have been dangerous - hundreds of desks were removed from classrooms one weekend and piled high in the school’s lobby for all to see on Monday morning.</p>
<p>Not really a prank but S and about 30 other guys decided to have a “ride your bike to school” day near the end of their senior year. They made a big production of riding VERY slowly down the road to their school making all the kids driving toward the student parking lot have to creep along. Lots of horn blowing and general frivolity. The guys had a lot of fun and even got a mention at graduation that year. </p>
<p>One kid drove his Dad’s tractor to school, drove in the student parking lot and parked in his regular assigned space as if there were nothing unusual about that. We live in an upper middle class suburb where lots of kids have no idea what to do with a tractor. So it was a big hit.</p>
<p>My daughter’s high school had an official senior skip day, though that seems somewhat oxymoronic. The seniors also planned an unofficial senior skip day, which annoyed the administration. My daughter happened not to be at school that day, and the school called me on my cell phone to ask if I knew where she was. I said, Yes, she’s here with me; we’re touring Yale.</p>