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13 years without missing school? Somebody take his temperature
| Saturday, May 31 2008 5:53 PM
Last Updated: Saturday, May 31 2008 5:56 PM
Congratulations to Jonathan Lee Happel, who made it through 13 years of school without missing so much as a single day of instruction. That's an achievement that points to a single-mindedness of purpose, a succession of competent campus registrars and unusually good luck. Not necessarily a rock-solid immune system, though -- that's rarely the case even with students who always, unfailingly, make it to class. It certainly wasn't the case with Happel.
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"Oh, yeah, I got sick," Happel admitted Friday. "I even threw up once in middle school. I asked to be excused and I made it to the nurse's room. When I was done I went back to class."
Happel, a newly minted Centennial High School graduate, e-mailed The Californian a few days ago to ask if "our show" would be willing to "air" a story about his perfect attendance. A few of my colleagues might have been a tad put off by the form-letter appearance of his offer. Not me. So here goes: Pretend I sound just like Larry King. Add suspenders to the photo if it helps.
Happel strikes me as a great kid, but I'm much more impressed with his 4.388 grade point average and No. 8 senior-class ranking than his willingness to drag himself to school every day since kindergarten. I'm more impressed with his skills on the soccer field and his 500 hours of volunteer work as a Kern County Sheriff's Explorer than his aptitude for soldiering on in the face of injury and illness. I'm thinking he really should have stayed in bed once or twice along the way.
Dr. Claudia Jonah, interim health officer of the Kern County Department of Public Health, agreed. "Students make a bad, bad choice when they come to school feeling sick," she said. "We should certainly acknowledge students who have that kind of strong determination, but when we run the risk of exposing others, that's bad. Maybe we need another category: Perfect attendance, except for illnesses with a valid doctor's note."
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention agrees too -- the health agency provides schools with posters advising kids and parents to stay home when they're sick, lest they infect others.
But schools across the country reward such behavior. It's part of the culture. On Friday, I did a Google news search of the term "perfect attendance" and got 591 hits over the last 30 days. Many stories suggested graduates with perfect attendance had taken silly or irresponsible chances to keep their streaks alive.
Cody Butcher of Lafayette, Ind., kept going to school even after he contracted mononucleosis because a local car dealer was offering a used car to one perfect (and lucky) kid. No word on how many non-perfect kids came down with mono later.
Vicki Dunlap of upstate New York broke her ankle on the next-to-last day of class back in grade school, but her family held off on taking her to the doctor. Way to go, mom! How's that limp, Vicki?
School district officials are often stuck in the middle on this. The Kern High School District gets roughly $42 in average daily attendance funding -- that's per student, per day -- so it can't have kids going home every time they sneeze. Then there's truancy, an ongoing problem for schools across the country not only because of ADA funding but because chronic absenteeism feeds dropout rates and leads to higher crime rates. Quality kids like Jonathan Happel are the pleasant flip side of that whole challenge.
So it's no wonder many parents place a high value on attendance. Some start pretty early. Mildred Avila of Bakersfield e-mailed the newspaper the same day Happel did to complain about Frank West School's treatment of her granddaughter, a graduating first-grader. Malaya Avila's perfect attendance had been overlooked at not one but two school awards assemblies. Clearly, Mrs. Avila wrote, the school administration "does not care about the kids in their school." I called to ask her about it. How is little Malaya doing otherwise? "Oh, wonderfully," grandma said. "She's a very good reader."
Good attendance is huge, but parents have bigger fish to fry. So do students. I'm happy for Jonathan Happel, and I'll be even happier for him if, as he pursues that university degree in biology/forensic science, he allows himself a sick day or two. He deserves it. His classmates do too.
Reach Robert Price at 395-7399 or rprice@bakersfield.