Dear Principal,

Doing community service is important because it's helping out the world. The students do it because they want to and because they care not because they have to. If you create a program where they could sign up for community service because they want to, then that will be fine. If you make it mandatory to do community service, then there will be a lot of complaints. Basically, if you make the students do community service, you'll be going against what they want. Some of them actually have things to do like extracurricular activities or out of school plans that are important. The best thing to do, would be to require all of the students to do community service at least once a month for extra credit. You can also give them a choice of doing it more than once or just once. Therefore, The students will be able to keep their plans and they'll still be helping out. Also, you could make it mandatory for anyone that has a write-up because they could do community work as a punishment. But making students who are innocent do it even if they don't want to will make it seem like a punishment. The students will tell their parents and the parents will call the school complaining. Giving the students a benefit will definitely get them to help out. Its good that some of the students do community work without a benefit or something in return. Those students are inspired to help out and feel that it is neccessary. The other students that don't want to help out always wants something in return so maybe giving them extra credit will help. These are just some ideas that will still have students doing community service but also won't go overboard with the concept.

Sincerely,

An 8th grade student