Disclaimer: Editorials are the opinions of the writers and not necessarily the opinion of the staff or the administration of the school.

After the initial excitement for the start of a new school year, many tend to fall into the mid-school year slump, being more likely to miss the bus and get to school late after exhausting, homework-filled nights. Due to the strict requirements regarding the credit denial policy, avoiding credit denial has become problematic for some.

According to school policy, students need to be present for 90 percent of class time in order to be marked present. In other words, if a student misses 4.9 minutes of class or more, they will be marked down as absent and the absence is not excused.

After ten unexcused absences, students become eligible for credit denial.

The problem lies mainly with the maximum amount of time that can be missed without it counting as absence. Especially in the morning time with all the traffic around school and in the small surrounding neighborhoods, it’s easy to get stuck in traffic even if one is on time.

Freshman Chris Edwards said, “They should have more time [that can be missed]. We should be allowed to miss ten minutes before it counts as an absence.”

Additionally, because Seminole has two magnet programs, students from all over the county attend school at Seminole. Even simply oversleeping by a few minutes can cause a student to be too late to be in first period without being marked as absent.

While neither traffic nor running late is easily escaped by the strict 90 percent class attendance policy, even having to stay behind after a class can cause one to be too late in making it on time to the next one. Just walking around campus (on a good day) takes about five minutes so staying behind to talk to a teacher for a minute or two can make a student late to their next class, late enough to once again be marked as absent.

An anonymous junior said, “I constantly feel worried about making it on time to my next class when I need to talk to a teacher or when I’m finishing up a test. A lot of teachers are strict about the policy too, so over the course of the eighteen-week semester, those absences slowly creep up to ten, which is the most you can miss before qualifying for credit denial.”

While this occurrence may not make a big difference once or twice, it can pile on as the semester goes on. Especially if a student has an A or a B in a class they’re marked absent for (even if they’re present for most of it) multiple times, an exception should be made and the time policy should be altered. The credit denial policy is simply too strict and does not withhold credit based on how much of class a student has truly attended or his true capability in the class.