BERLIN – The compulsory school attendance age in Worcester County will increase to 17 next year and to 18 for the 2017-2018 school year.
The age increase, approved by the Worcester County Board of Education Tuesday, is in line with state legislation and means that local students will no longer be able to quit school at 16 years of age.
School system officials said Worcester County, with one of the lowest dropout rates in the state, sees few students leave school early anyway.
“We work very hard with our kids to find alternative ways to keep them in school,” said Lou Taylor, the county’s assistant superintendent for administration and former principal of Stephen Decatur High School. “We don’t allow kids just because they’re 16 to walk early.”
Taylor explained that the compulsory attendance age would not keep students who wanted to from graduating early. He said it would just be used to keep students from dropping out before they fulfilled their graduation requirements.
Jerry Wilson, Worcester County’s superintendent of schools, said the change would encourage more students to earn their high school diplomas.
“Research shows that when young people stay in school they increase their opportunities for self-sufficiency, higher wages, and healthier lives,” Wilson said. “Raising the age of compulsory attendance from 16 to 18 extends the opportunity for schools to successfully prepare students for college and career.”
In addition to changing the dropout age, the school board updated its policies on weapons and smoking Tuesday. The weapons policy, which is brand new, prohibits weapons of any kind on school premises and outlines disciplinary actions to be taken against anyone who does bring a weapon to school.
“This is brand new,” Taylor said. “We didn’t have a specific spelled-out policy. We wanted to have something clear about weapons.”
According to Taylor, the updated smoking policy addresses the new products that have gained popularity recently, such as smokeless tobacco and electronic cigarettes. Students are not allowed to have any nicotine products at schools.
“For anybody that thinks this is harsh, everyone’s moving to a smoke-free, tobacco-free campus,” said Board of Education member Jonathan Cook.
Cook stressed that more and more people were becoming aware of the dangers of nicotine and that workplaces were beginning to prohibit it.
“It’s not the mode of delivery,” he said, “It’s that you’re using nicotine.”