To: Editor

I think that the principal should not require all students to do community service. When i hear someone say i am going to help out by signing up for community service I think of them doing it on their own and not being made to do it.

Some children do not have time on their hands to help out. There are a lot of people who do a lot of things and have a things written down for the week and may not be able to add another thing to the week. If parents of the children have them in sports that take up most of their afternoon time and they also have school in the morning then kids grades might start to drop because they may not be able to prioritise things they way their parents want them to verses the way the principal wants them too.

Community service is a great idea for the people who have time on their hands and would like to do something to help out. Community service is a great idea and I think its great when people do something to help the community, but leave the helping out to the people who want to do it not for everyone to be obligated to do it because the principal says you need to do a certain amount of community service before the year is over.

What should be done is the principal should do is make kids who do bad things in school or kids who let their grades drop below a "C" do community service. They will work till she or he feels they worked enough to make up for what they did wrong or get their grade back above a "C". If I child knows that if they have to do something called work if they do something bad then I think some of them would start putting 2 and 2 together if they had to do manually labor for 5 hours over the weekend. That would be better then suspending them and not making them do anything but miss school for what they did wrong, and they will learn nothing but realize they get to get out of school for something they did wrong. A kid will start to pay more attention in class and start turning their homework in if they have to do work for anything lower than a "C". But to make someone who either doesn't have time or doesn't want to do community service be forced to is not the was of the United stars. The United states gives the people the right of speech and the right to do what they would like to do, with boundaries.

If the principal ends up passing this as a rule then the name of "Community service" would need to be changed to something different. When someone does community service it is something they sign up for or something they do when they do something wrong to work off what they did. A lot of people I know would like to help out and do some sort of community service but a lot of the time they don't have time to make a commitment to it. Sports could get in the way or school and keeping grades up. Let the people who have time to help and want to help do community services. Community service is for volunteering or used as a punishment for people who need to make up for something they did wrong.