Administrators designed the new advisory class period to build relationships between students and teachers, and help with SEL learning, however, because there’s not an academic grade attached to the class, students skip advisory.

“You’re responsible for being where you’re supposed to be when you’re supposed to be there all day,” Dr. Stephanie Bonneau, principal, said. “Even if it’s just 25 minutes in a day that you just roam, we don’t know where you are, or whatever’s happening during that 25 minutes. It’s not available to students. It’s not optional.”

Students assume there are no consequences of skipping, however students caught skipping advisory risk a day in AC or discipline procedures. 

Academic Associate Principal Stephanie Monajami and other administrators ask teachers to treat skipping advisory the same as skipping a class by counting every student who skips advisory absent.

“If a student were to skip class, they would be given after-school detention, Saturday school, ISS, or whatever the AP deems appropriate,” Ms. Monajami said. “That same thing needs to be happening with advisory skipping.”

Dr. Bonneau and Ms. Moanjami wanted the new advisory period to mirror teachers’ free period for students to either relax or catch up on work.

“I hope that advisory is a time for students to relieve some of that anxiety,” Ms. Monajami said. “Advisory should be a time to knock some of those things out of the way to focus on your mental well-being and to build a relationship with a teacher that you’re not worried about classwork for.”

Several students believe advisory doesn’t serve a purpose. Junior Adaleigh Nguyen often notices people missing from her advisory period but also admits to not thinking advisory is significant.

“A lot of people don’t show up and I don’t know if it’s because they’re skipping or actually going somewhere but I’m sure that a lot of people skip,” Nguyen said. “I think [advisory] is mostly important for clubs and makeup work but besides that, I don’t think it’s very important.”

Administrators don’t know where students who skip advisory go, but regardless if the student roams around or goes to another teacher’s classroom, they are not where they should be, concerning both administrators and teachers.

“What we found last year was that the advisory teachers were frustrated because their students would come in, check-in, then leave and they never knew if they got where they were supposed to be going or not. Then on the sponsor side, they didn’t necessarily want the students coming into the locker room or their classroom because they were doing stuff with other students and it was a distraction or overfilled the room,” Dr. Bonneau said. “Everyone should go to advisory and kind of stay put unless there’s some kind of special circumstance.”