Every year in March, a day both dreaded and awaited makes its appearance: SAT Day. The SAT needs no introduction. A controversial test that has previously acted as a roadblock for many students applying to college. Even these days with the majority of schools going test-optional, it’s stressful to take a test that has a significant impact on your future. That’s why it’s totally bonkers that Walter Johnson tries to make kids attend school longer than necessary on SAT day.

The administration clearly knows that it’s ridiculous to make kids attend school longer than necessary on days they have important standardized tests. If they didn’t, then they wouldn’t allow kids to not attend classes the day of their AP exams. What makes the SAT any different? The only difference that might justify this divergence in the procedure I can fathom is that the SAT is on the same day for all students. The administration may feel that giving every student an early release day when they aren’t totally obligated to is unnecessary.

I would be totally, 100%, manning the starboard, on board with this if there was meaningful instruction going on on SAT day. However, there isn’t. What does happen is students sign up for “wellness activities”, blocks of time where teachers host various activities for students to participate in after their standardized test. The problem with wellness activities is that students simply don’t sign up for them. Students have found that if they don’t sign up for any wellness activities, then there won’t be any teacher there to take their attendance which means that they get to go home early.

Students leaving school when they have no reason to be there is only natural. Creating artificial reasons to stay after standardized testing is absurd and borderline disrespectful towards students’ time. This goes double for seniors who don’t even have testing on SAT day.

This creates a giant problem, as the school uses its resources to plan wellness activities that a majority of the student body doesn’t attend. The administration has tried to counteract this by making it “mandatory” for students to sign up for wellness activities but with no real way to reinforce it. This is the same sort of idealist policy philosophy that created the current student ID rules and why we have random bathroom closures.

The school wellness activities are actually a great example of a bigger problem at MCPS. There are too many big brains at the top who come up with these “beam of light from the heavens” ideas that are completely out of touch with the students and staff that are actually affected by the policies they make. That’s why there seems to always be a new mandatory homeroom slide show but never any new bus routes or portables.

To clarify, wellness activities are not an inherently bad idea and something similar to them should probably be put into place on SAT day for students who can’t access their homes during the day for whatever reason. That being said, the number of resources that are put into them and the lengths the administration goes to try and make them mandatory is absurd.