Around this time of the school year many students come rushing into the office asking how much “seat time” they have. And sometimes it’s too late to make it up. There are a lot of punishments for not making up seat time. Seniors are not allowed allowed to walk at graduation without clearing their seat time and students are not allowed to get their yearbooks on time. Students also can’t participate in Highland’s traditions including Homecoming, Freak East and spirit week.

“At least 50 percent of the seniors have seat time,” Karrie Allred said.

Seat time is the required amount of time that students spend in the classroom. This is all based on the carnegie unit. The Carnegie unit based the awarding of academic credit on how much time students spent in direct contact with a classroom teacher.  The standard Carnegie unit is 120 hours of contact time with a teacher. Which broken down means one hour of learning a day, five days a week, for 24 weeks, or 7,200 minutes of learning over the course of a school year.

“I just barely looked at my seat time and realized I had a lot to make up” student Mina Lambert said, “I think seat time pushes students to attend class more.”

There are many ways to make up seat time. Highland provides a after school homework lab where students can go and work on homework to make up the hours. Students can work with the teachers or coaches by helping them and doing work. There is a few saturday classes held. And if a student has a perfect attendance for 2 weeks straight that counts for 10 hours.

“We need to decrease our chronic to severe absente rate in the school which is 11%” principal Chris Jenson said, “That means 11% of the students are gone more than 10% of the school year, which is a lot.”

Principal Jenson wants Highland to become a better school and believes that as seat time is one way to better the school.