NATHAN MCCULLOCH
Dear Mr. Payne, Mrs. Guy, and Mr. Jaurique, and Ms. Specter,
My name is Nathan McCulloch. I am a working student writing to you addressing HB 130 and the well being of students who work over the summer. Although adding and consolidating breaks over the course of the school year could help with summer slide, and students forgetting material that they learned over the school year, doing so puts individuals who work over the summer and need jobs to provide for themselves or their families at a disadvantage.
Although individuals in favor of calendars A or B may argue that students do lose some of the material that they learn over the school year over the summer, they further their education in other ways while holding an occupation. It is important that these working students get career experience so that they learn the tools and skills that will apply to later career life. The vast majority of highschoolers are employed at some point during their highschool education during the summer. In comparison to the rest of the nation’s 3.6% unemployment rate, Los Alamos County has an extremely low, 2% unemployment rate, including highschoolers aged 15-18 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ NMLOSA8 URN. This means that the vast majority of Los Alamos highschoolers are working, or have worked at some point. Changing to a “transitional” or “balanced" schedule, as in calendar options B or C, may hurt the workforce of LAHS, taking away from students’ ability to gather the experience that they will need to support themselves and their families later in life.
The working student’s wellbeing and mental health directly correlates with the amount of pressure brought on my school. A shockingly high, 19.0% of students, in LAHS, have thought about killing themselves as of 2019 YSSR Survey for Los Alamos Public School. This means that out of the 886 students at LAHS, at least 168 of those individuals thought about ending their lives. That number has also worsened in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. Students already have a high quantity of pressure brought on by their home-lives, social-lives, and work-lives and do not need the added stress that a balanced calendar will bring on. Pressures brought on by an already demanding school system would only increase if classroom hours were increased. Students need a break over the summer to take time to work on themselves and reset before the next school year, and taking that time away from them could be detrimental to their mental health and wellbeing.
To allow students the experience that they need to be successful in later life and to help with their mental health and well being, the Los Alamos school system needs to instill calendar A in response to the recent passing of HB130. Calendar A has the most amount of summer time which will best benefit the interests of students regarding their summer occupations, their well being and stress levels, and their ability to work and provide for themselves during the school year. If the board fails to choose calendar A, the student population’s mental health will be negatively affected and students will be lacking in the experience that they need to be successful in later life.
I appreciate your time and consideration upon reviewing my concerns.
Sincerely,
Nathan McCulloch
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