Policies discussed, parents stress frustrations at school board meeting
By Megan Kelley
The Imperial Republican
Multiple names were written on the sheet for public comment at the Chase County Schools (CCS) regular board meeting Tuesday night.
Those who spoke were parents of football players who received detention for being late to school on Tuesday.
Bruce Peterson and his wife Crystal came to the meeting to ask why their son Trevor‚ a senior, received detention on Tuesday.
Trevor and a group of football boys had practice at 5:30 a.m. on Tuesday due to parent-teacher conferences. School was also let out at 1:30 due to conferences.
“They went to breakfast and were late to school,” Peterson said. “The issue is not that they were late,” he added. “They were late, but most of them were excused by parents.”
Peterson referred to the student handbook, where it states that a student has two days to make up work for an excused or unexcused absence. “It wasn’t even an absence, it was a tardy,” he said.
“In my opinion, Mr. Lechtenberg went off policy and required the group be back at 1:45 for a 1.5 hour detention,” Peterson said. “And they were threatened with athletic ineligibility for practice and games coming up.
None of that is in the policy,” he added.
Peterson said his kids are his responsibility until they show up at school. “This took place before school started.”
“The issue is the reason we don’t make policies up on the fly because where does it stop?”
Other parents who shared the same story to the board were Dan Kuhlmann and Chris Jussel.
Jussel asked the board, “What’s the rule?”
Kuhlmann was upset that he wasn’t informed of the detention. “I called and excused Mikael, I’m just here to find out why I wasn’t called and why this punishment is existing,” he asked the board. “If there’s something like this going on why wasn’t I called?”
Since the parents’ questions were asked during the public comment time, they were not answered by the board or school officials during the meeting.
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