Let’s stop sending mixed messages about the importance of class
time
It’s quite a stretch to call working at election polls an educational field trip. It’s also clearly not “volunteer” work because participants are paid: $125 for a full day, $77.50 for a half day.
Santa Clara County Registrar Jesse Durazo recruits high school students to staff polling places through the High School Election Officer Program that’s been in place since 1997.
Gilroy High School officials allow students who meet the program’s criteria – U.S. citizens, 16 or older, 2.5 grade point average or better – to miss a full day of school to participate.
It’s a bad idea.
Students really don’t learn much about civics or the political process by working at the polls. They learn much more about clerical work than anything else. Any lessons about the civic process pale in comparison to the lessons that they miss when absent for a full day of high school.
Requiring attendance at any Brown Act-noticed meeting – such as school board, city council or the planning commission – followed up by a report is a much better civics education tool.
And it’s one that doesn’t require missing school, to boot.
Teachers constantly tell us that they don’t have enough instructional time. Students from countries that regularly outperform American students have longer school days and more school days than our students.
There’s simply not enough learning happening at the polling places to justify the loss of an entire school day.
Besides the negative impact on student learning, this program has a negative impact on taxpayers. Because the program is considered an excused absence – for “volunteering” of all things – the school receives ADA funds from the state for participants in the program, in spite of missing school.
Taxpayers get to pay again – in the form of poll worker stipends – for each student who “volunteers” at the polls through this program.
Let’s stop sending mixed messages to students about the importance of school and about the true meaning of volunteering. Let’s stop pretending that a day directing voters where to sign or where to deposit an absentee ballot teaches them important lessons about civics. Let’s stop fleecing taxpayers for this dubious program.
Gilroy Unified School District Superintendent Deborah Flores should direct GHS officials not to participate in this program any longer. This should be a common sense decision and not one that the Board of Education needs to take up.
