Over the summer Rolla High School has gotten several new additions, one of them being in school suspension (ISS).  ISS will be an addition to detention, Saturday school, and out of school suspension.  It will be run by social studies teacher, Nancy Lowrey and RJHS teacher, Tim Dunn.

“Hopefully we can address attendance issues. Our attendance rate was about 85 percent. Our discipline last year was either Saturday school, or kick them [students] out. There’s a pretty big difference between those two consequences. We thought there needed to be something in the middle of the road to help not kick kids out if we don’t need to.” Assistant Principal Corey Ray said.

Hopefully ISS will help raise attendance rates and grades.

“It’s not just for attendance issues, PRIDE time can help out with those types of things. I’m talking about not sending kids home for their fourth cell phone offense. Now we have an intermediate consequence whereas before I was kicking kids out of school… now we can actually keep them in school, have a pretty stiff punishment and the education process continues,” Ray said.

Although ISS is helping kids with attendance, and minor discipline infractions, Mr. Ray said it will not be a fun environment.

“It’s going to be very structured, very strict, and very quiet; a place where people don’t want to go,” Ray said.

Nancy Lowrey discussed how she thinks ISS is going to run for the upcoming year.

“I think it’s going to work out very well. Kids will be coming in here and will have the assignments they need to do. If students have questions Mr. Dunn and I will be there, instead of saying ‘you’re on your own kid,’” Lowrey said.

As of right now ISS will not affect going to school dances or other activities. It will be an all day suspension, and will give students a chance to do work without having to take a zero for the day because of out of school suspension.