Senioritis: Is AGR Harming The Class of ‘25?

By Isabela Pinto

For more than four years, Westhill has had no attendance policy in place. Therefore, this year’s newly implemented AGR policy is throwing students for a loop. For the senior class in particular, the absence limit per class per quarter is becoming strained, as many seniors find themselves beginning to fall prey to symptoms of the infamous senioritis. 

Students in their senior year of high school have a lot on their plates. Preoccupied with graduation and beyond, students often find it less necessary to show up to class and begin to only do the bare minimum. As college admissions begin to roll in with the start of the second semester, this is the point in the school year where the seniors start to check out. Sabrina Weisel (‘25) said, “especially once all college decisions started coming back, it became really hard to focus on the present, since the future is getting so close and we all have to make our plans for the next couple of years.” 

With the new attendance policy, a fear of getting an AGR can be extremely stressful for all students. They are sometimes forced to resort to coming to school sick in order to avoid going over the absence limit. Specifically for seniors, the policy restricts the opportunities seniors have for college visits and for attending admitted students days at their chosen schools. Because they cannot miss so many days of school, seniors have to fill their weekends and breaks with those important trips instead.

Thankfully, new additions have been made to the AGR system in Q3, such as no longer having excused absences count towards the criteria for AGR. This has made it a little easier for seniors to work with. Still, most seniors would rate the severity of their class’ experience with senioritis as a 6 out of 10. This is a surprisingly sharp contrast to the senioritis experiences of previous senior classes. 

“I’d say we were definitely the upper limit around a 9. No attendance policy made it that seniors had no incentive to go to school,” said Hudson Jang (‘24), a recent Westhill graduate. “If there was an attendance policy, senioritis would definitely not have been as bad.” Since their AP classes were mainly focused on review in the last few weeks before exams, most seniors preferred to self study and therefore, didn’t show up to class. The current, lower rates of senioritis that the class of 2025 reported seem to verify Jang’s thought that an attendance policy would have improved the severity of senioritis.

Regardless of the seemingly positive effects of the attendance policy, seniors do not feel as though the strict guidelines are in their best interest. After working hard for four long years, they believe they deserve a break. Elizabeth Mendez (‘25) said,  “I feel like they can adjust the policy based off the grade you’re in. I believe seniors shouldn’t be upheld to the same attendance policy as the underclassmen.” She also suggested that if students have good grades and only miss a few days of school, they should not be penalized. Seniors say they deserve a little bit of leniency and time to relax after the craziness of applying to college. Unfortunately, a strict attendance policy doesn’t give them these little freedoms. 

As for whether the attendance policy will be changed for Q4, the answer is no. For each previous quarter, students have had the opportunity to recover their grades in the next quarter if they went over the limit and were given an AGR in Powerschool. Since the fourth quarter doesn’t have another marking period after it because of summer break, many have wondered how grades will be recovered. Jonathan Ortiz, Westhill’s MTSS and the point person for all things attendance, said “we [may] use the dates only in May, or April and May, and then in early June give the recovery process.” The specifics are not final, but there will be a way to recover lost grades.

The consistency of this policy into the last quarter of the school year leaves the seniors still struggling with the grind of studying for exams in addition to their college search journey. They remain hopeful that their home stretch to graduation might be made a little smoother through a lightened attendance policy, but at the very least know that their senioritis could have been much worse without it.