Students entitled to excused mental health days
October 3, 2022
Morton East High School has adopted a new policy in which each student is entitled to excused absences for mental health days.
Every single student is entitled to five mental health days in the whole school year. To take a mental health day a parent or guardian needs to call the school and specify that the student is taking a mental health day. After returning the student will then be required to follow up with a social worker. A total of three students have taken a mental health day this year. And in a survey of 100 Morton East students only ten said they took a mental health day last year.
“I think it’s good our kids have five days, and the importance of mental health is being recognized,” social worker Ms. Joscelyn Rivera said.
While social worker Ms. Joscelyn Rivera thinks positively of the execution of the mental health policy.
Another Morton staff associate assistant principal Ms. Carol Best thinks the execution of the new policy could have been neater and more thought out.
“I’m all for the policy, I just think it was messy and thrown out there as an easy way to get votes,” assistant principal Mrs. Carol Best said.
Furthermore, senior Diego Barocio also has mixed feelings about the policy.
“I feel that if a person needs a mental health day then they should use it but I would rather just go to school,” senior Diego Barocio said.
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Bernadette Medina • Oct 7, 2022 at 9:32 am
Genge- I believe that mental health days are needed since most students don’t show how they are actually feeling. Students life’s are hard and mentally draining and could cause someone’s mental health to drain extensively. Schools should take responsibility, students brains are working for 8 hours or more for 5 days straight I believe everyone should take mental health days.
Victor Guerrero • Oct 7, 2022 at 8:18 am
Genge- I think I like the mental health days, lots of students have more going on in life then just school. If a student has a lot going on a day would be nice just to take a break and destress from all the work they been doing at school and at home. I think 5 is just enough in a school year so the student doesn’t just keep taking these days off just to get out of school. It is also a good Idea to make them meet with a social worker after just to make sure the student is in good mental health and nothing to serious is going on.
Yulissa Gonzalez • Oct 7, 2022 at 7:39 am
(Genge) I think that it is very important that students are allowed to take mental health days. I think that it is important that schools realize that their students have very complex lifes. Therefore either specifically something is bothering us or we are simply overwhelmed. I also think that if students desperately need to take a day off school they would still do it regardless if they are marked absent, so this policy is useful. Therefore it is nice that they know that the school understands them and values their mental health and wellbeing.
Diego Barocio • Oct 6, 2022 at 9:29 am
The article is very brief and waste’s no time which is great, with many Morton staff opinions and seemingly solid statistics. Although it does seem to be lacking in information due to being brief
Reporter • Oct 14, 2022 at 9:37 am
Thank you for reading and commenting. We’ll keep that in mind for our next article!
Alexander Quiroz • Oct 5, 2022 at 10:37 am
This is a nicely written article with great information about the topic. Though at first I thought it wasn’t that informative because of how small some of the paragraphs are.
Reporter • Oct 14, 2022 at 9:38 am
Thank you for reading and leaving a positive comment.
Reporter • Oct 5, 2022 at 10:34 am
This Article was very formative. I liked that you explained how mental health days work, but you could have interviewed someone who has taken a mental heath day before to get insider information.