Imagine a thirteen year old girl with anxiety and depression, so when she's around people for too long she has a panic attack. Do you think we should have that happen at our school? Extracurricular activites get kids active out of the classroom, but they're extra

NOT

neccecary. I believe that not all students should be forced to take an extracurricular activity.

Having fun with something you enjoy is a great way to spend your afternoon after school, but some students have loads of homework from honors classes, or they might have a farm to take care of with their parents. Another possiblity is that they have a job at Walmart. They don't have time for a production in theatre or playing this years basketball team. Even if there are a lot of kids who don't have something to do after school, it doesn't make it anymore reasonable to force them into something else to do. They may not have responsibilities, but we do. So why stress us out with more work when you can let us make our own choices.

Being anti-social can be a horrible mix with extracurricular activities since they make us get active with our peers, and that get bad fast. Some kids at this age are in a dark place of the mind, and most of those kids just can't deal with the stress of talking to others. So putting them in a scenario where they have to is not only wrong, but harmful to the student. They could have a mental breakdown, cut themselves, or even go to suicide over little things that people don't even remember. It's an act of terrorism to do any of those things, because it doesn't only hurts the person, it hurts the people around them or close to them. The last thing we want at this school is to make our fellow peers and your students feel stressed and traumatized.

Since we're having to stay after school now, we won't have buses to bring us home, and some of our parents aren't willing to get us either because they're at work or they don't have a way of even getting to us. If we were in highschool then maybe some of us could drive, but we're in middle school. Our parents might both be at work. We don't have public buses so we can't go home that way, and walking home is quite a stretch. We'd probably get complaints for parents about their kids waking home. The best thing you could possibly do is rearrange the bus system, but that's harder than it sounds. It'll all have to be this intricate set of buses, and I don't think you have the time to set that up.

I believe that we should not be forced to take an extracurricular activity. We all have things to do at home, we might possibly not be ready for the exposure, and some of us also don't have a way to get home safely without taking the school bus. Save everyone some trouble and don't make us do the activities.