<p>One thing I hate about mandatory community service is the assumption that even ten hours or so is easy to come up with. That isn’t necessarily true for kids who (a) work to help their families pay bills, (b) help at home with younger siblings, (c) don’t have transportation to and from places, or (c) have parents who work multiple jobs or have multiple children and for whom adding the extra activity pushes the schedule over the breaking point. Younger daughter goes to a public school in an area with a lot of poverty and a large number of kids who are also parents. I can honestly see that there are quite a percentage of those kids who need to be on the receiving end, rather than the giving end, of community service and such a requirement would be a hardship for them. Older daughter’s private school is not in the same situation and community service could be mandatory without causing the same type of difficulty.</p>