Emergence of the 2023-2024 school year awakens a new system to deal with the punishments of students. This new system is named the demerit system and will greatly change the way students view and clear discipline. The new system identifies as an alternate way to serve discipline hours as opposed to only serving them in detention. That means after school detention will still be implemented, but the school will no longer implement a two-week time period to serve those detentions or it doubles. One “demerit” identifies one hour worth of service and a demerit that isn’t cleared stays on the students high school record forever. John Bajorek believes that the demerit system “gives students more flexibility to serve out their consequences, rather than straight detention, Saturday school where you have to serve it.” Before working at Dana, Mr. Bajorek was working on another campus. He saw how the demerit system affected the school and also appreciated the benefits the arrangement brought. The school can track demerits, and if a student has ten demerits or more, that student is ineligible to go to school events like football games until that student has under ten demerits. Demerits can be served before, during lunch, after school. Students will have to sign up for that particular date in the mall. There is also a possibility in the works to serve demerits by canceling them out with evidence of volunteering time outside of the school to impact the community in a positive way. Ultimately, this new and improved system makes discipline management easier for students needing to serve demerits and administrators who can give more options for kids.
Author: Jean-Luc Jouanel
