Ligonier Valley School District administrators have loosened the guidelines for college visits.
College-bound juniors and seniors now can receive as many as four excused absences to tour colleges, Superintendent Stephen Whisdosh told the school board at Monday night's meeting.
The former policy allowed juniors only one excused absence for a college visit; seniors were granted three days.
With the modified policy, students can use up to four days within the two years. Juniors, for example, can use all four days in one year.
"If this doesn't work," Whisdosh said, "then we can come back and modify it."
The policy was revised after the Rev. Imre Bertalan, executive director of the Bethlen Home, told the board in August that a single day often is not enough time for junior students to visit colleges.
Junior-level students visiting out-of-state colleges, for example, often need more than one day to make the trip, he told the board, and they shouldn't be penalized with an illegal absence.
More students are also applying for early admission, with applications due in October or November of their senior year, so they start the college search as a junior, said Assistant Superintendent Vanessa Roddy.
Directors unanimously approved a three-day trip by the Laurel Valley Middle/High School marching band, but one director asked if students were attending too many overnight trips costing too much money.
"I have a problem with so many overnight trips being taken by our kids," Director Donna Zimmerman said. "This is about the same time as the prom and the senior trip."
Although the school district won't pay the expenses of the May 2-4, 2003, band trip to Williamsburg, Va., Zimmerman said all of the activities may be putting too much pressure on parents to raise money.
No band parents were present, but Principal Matthew McNickle said the overnight trip, which includes a marching performance at Busch Gardens, is looked forward to by band members.
"There's a higher participation rate (for the band trip) than the senior trip," McNickle said.
While the Williamsburg trip was approved, band parents still can investigate other visits and performance venues for the students, McNickle said.
In other business, Director Daniel Resenic suggested directors join with the drug-free-schools committee to address substance abuse and consider a new policy.
"I've talked about it in the past about mandatory drug testing for all new hires and random testing of staff," Resenic said. "I'm not proposing drug tests for the entire student body. But we need to develop ways to address the problem."
Employees should set an example of a drug-free lifestyle for the students, he said.
Resenic said he wasn't aware of any heroin use in Ligonier Valley, "but we don't want to wait until we get one to take measures. We know it's in Westmoreland County."
