How Seniors Have Fallen Short in Community Service Hours

By Laiyla Arroyo
November 18, 2022

Despite the many opportunities being provided, only 1 in 5 seniors at SHA currently have their required community service hours done before graduation. 

The amount of required community service hours every senior must have by February is 25 hours, but many students have not finished their hours yet for various reasons.  

“All the school work you get really piles up when you’re trying to balance both at once,” said Tatianna Rodriguez. “And taking the time to do the community service hours takes time away from work and vice versa.”

Other seniors pointed out factors outside of academics.

“I haven’t recently because of sports and work,” said Leala Samuel.

The school provides the seniors with many options and opportunities to get their hours done such as teacher assistant opportunities, helping out at Snack Shack and so much more.

Seniors volunteering at snack shack during Lunch time!

“Students are coming from all backgrounds, some of them do have more availability than others,” said Carlee Santaniello, a teacher at SHA who puts together community service hour opportunities for students, “Anytime you’re putting on a set expectation on everybody equally as if everyone has the same availability, it’s going to create some inequity.”

Covid also affected the seniors since it took away about a year and a half away from them, meaning they got less time to complete those hours.

“There were practically no opportunities during Covid so that gave us one less year to get all the community service hours done,” Tatianna Rodriguez said. 

The two previous classes were exempt from fulfilling their 25 total community service hours but this year the expectations are clear.

“They’ve lost half of their freshman year and all of their sophomore year, however, they’ve had all of their junior year and senior year to earn those 25 hours,” said Emma Vanderpool, a Latin teacher at SHA and the class advisor of 2023. 

All seniors are expected this year to be able to fulfill their community service hours, especially with all of the help they have been given from the administration and the school, leaving no reason for about 20% of community service hours to be done.