Supervised by John Zainea, Saturday detentions are not well known among CHS students that haven’t attended them.

Once a month, a certain time period is assigned to a student between 8 am and 12 pm for Saturday detention. During this time they do independent activities such as free reading and classwork. These detentions can go up to four-hour periods depending on how serious the offense is.

“Generally, Saturday detentions aren’t given for a first offense unless it’s a big issue,” Dean of Students and Assistant Athletic Director Jason Morris said. “The Student Handbook talks about all the different violations that a student can make and what those different consequences are as a result of that.”

The consequence assigned to a student varies depending on the gravity or frequency of the offenses committed.

“We have different levels of discipline based on the number of times somebody has messed up or what they have specifically done,” Morris said. “ According to our Student Handbook, the fifth tardy is a two hour Saturday detention and the sixth tardy is a four hour Saturday detention. So the more you violate that policy, the more you build towards a Saturday Detention. Sometimes [the punishment] could even go from there to a suspension if it was a serious enough offense.”

If a student isn’t able to attend their scheduled Saturday detention, the family would have to reschedule for the following month’s detention.

“It really can’t be declined by the family,” Morris said. “We would have a meeting to discuss why they can’t make it. I’ve had to reschedule them before because they’re going to be out of town this weekend or visiting family out of town and then that’s okay, we can do it the following month.”

Although detentions can be delayed, a student cannot altogether avoid them. The number of students attending Saturday detention depends on how many students received a certain number of tardies or committed some other infraction in that month.

“We’ve had months where there’s been nobody, and we’ve had other months where there’s ten or more people,” Morris said. “So I always hope for that to be a low number though it really just varies month by month.”

The Student Handbook provides more information on detentions under the “Attendance Infractions” section. The student handbook can be found on the Chelsea High School website.