For our last “Did You Know?” feature of the school year, The Accolade looks into the origins of the Student Handbook, which few students are familiar with. The Accolade sends staff writer Claire Lee to investigate.
IMPORTANT MESSAGE for LANCER FAMILIES:
2024-2025 Data Confirmation
Current Junior, Sophomore, and Freshman parents should log into their parent AERIES account to complete the process TODAY!
After May 10th, access to Aeries will be limited until this is complete.
Mandatory Aeries Data Confirmation.
That’s what has been posted on the Sunny Hills website since the start of May.
Though “Mandatory Aeries Data Confirmation” is not something that students must complete, it’s a responsibility that school officials have tasked to their parents.
The process requires students’ parents or guardians to complete eight steps starting with verifying “Family Information” to “Contacts” to “Authorizations.” The sixth step under “Documents” is where users must click on boxes that state, “My student and I acknowledge that we have read the following …”
And among the list of PDF files available for downloading and review is the “Student Handbook,” which school officials say they update each year. The 2023-2024 edition contains 60 pages and covers information ranging from the bell schedule to the dress code to the academic honesty policy to campus clubs and organizations.
Principal Craig Weinreich’s letter to students follows the cover page.
“Sunny Hills High School is a place for you to challenge yourself, take risks, try new things, and grow. Each of you brings unique qualities, talents, and strengths to build on the rich tradition of Lancer pride,” according to Weinreich’s conclusion paragraph on page two. “Working together as students, along with parents, faculty, staff, and community, there are no limits to your academic and personal accomplishments.
“I wish you all an amazing school year, Lancers!”
Though the document, which also goes by the name, “Lancer Handbook,” on the cover, does not contain the most entertaining information, few students are aware of its origins and transformation from a print to a digital product.
According to a survey on an Instagram story posted on @sunnyhillsaccolade, 78% of the 76 respondents have never read this manual. On the other hand, the remaining 22% acknowledged its existence.
“I don’t think I recall any of my teachers talking about the handbook,” junior Evan Sareg said.
Even during the annual mandatory Aeries Data Confirmation, some students said parents did not encourage their presence to fill it out together.
“I was never aware that there was an Aeries Data Confirmation that needed to be filled out,” senior Johann Torrez. “I think my parents just filled it out for me every year.”
HANDBOOKS WERE MEANT TO BE “HANDED” OUT
The Accolade was unable to determine an exact date when school officials produced the first manual for students.
English teacher Jennifer Kim said she recalls getting them at the beginning of the school year from her period two teachers when she attended Sunny Hills from 1987 to 1991.
“I don’t recall much, but I remember it being an 8-inch-by-10-inch yellow[-covered] handbook,” Kim said. “My teachers would go over attendance among other policies that were crucial to go over.”
After being hired here as an English teacher in 1997, Kim said she continued to follow school protocol to hand out the physical copy to her second-period students for review and explain the basic school policies with her students.
Science teacher Kathy Bevill said she misses the printed version because it provided students with the opportunity to read through the handbook.
“I like having things printed,” Bevill said. “I know it’s not the best for the environment, but I think students would pay more attention to it if [the handbook] was in their hands.”
But other teachers doubted whether students ever valued the school manual after that first day of school.
“If I had to choose one version, I would pick digital because I think [the print version] was a huge waste of paper,” English teacher Suzanne Boxdorfer said.
Math teacher Myra Deister said she also prefers a digital version over the hard copy.
“Because it’s online, it is easier to find,” Deister said. “I can quickly do a search and find the page.”
MORE HANDBOOK HISTORY
Despite not finding a specific year for when the Lancer Handbook made its first appearance on campus, the idea to include school policies in print for each student stems as far back as pre-World War I.
According to “A Study of High-School Handbooks” on jstor.org by Francis D. Curtis from the University of Michigan, Roxbury Latin School in Boston gets the credit for becoming the first to publish such a resource for its students.
And that was in 1871, the same year when the first Major League Baseball game was played in the United States, when P.T. Barnum (aka “The Greatest Showman”) opened his three-ring circus called “The Greatest Show on Earth” and when the Great Chicago Fire killed 300 people and cuased $200 million in damage.
But the handbooks’ mass production in high schools nationwide didn’t catch steam until the 1920s, according to Curtis’ article, which cites statements from Harry C. McKown, who published an article titled, “The High-School Handbook,” in the School Review in November 1924.
“A decade ago [about 1914] there were probably not a dozen of these books in existence,” Curtis cites McKown’s statement.
Because of manuals being required in the armed forces during World War I, that’s when high schools started catching on. McKown calls it the great “impetus to the high-school handbook movement.”
After two World Wars and the Korean conflict, that movement became a part of pop culture.
A young adult author, Ellen Conford, wrote a book titled, The Alfred G. Graebner Memorial High School Handbook of Rules and Regulations. Published in 1976, the novel centers on a sophomore who has to deal with her first year of entering high school (at that time, freshmen were still in junior high school).
Conford cites various policies throughout the story to advance the plot; her fictional work would eventually be adapted for television, airing in June 1984 as an episode of the “CBS Schoolbreak Special.”
FROM THE 20TH TO THE 21ST CENTURY
Another mystery remains as to the specific year school officials stopped printing thousands of Lancer Handbooks for distribution on the first day of school. And when school officials started requiring students’ parents to complete the Mandatory Aeries Data Confirmation, they decided to include the handbook as among the vast amount of items that needed to be checked off to complete the “assignment.”
Assistant principal Heather Bradley, who started here in the 2022-2023 school year, said she has been assigned to update the document before the start of each new term.
The district’s new dress code policy was added for 2022-2023, but for this school year, Bradley said the administration did not make any significant changes to the regulations except for the current 2023-2024 Associated Student Body cabinet, leadership class members and newly hired employees on campus.
“The handbook is essential in understanding the school rules and policies,” Bradley said. “ It is important to have the handbook because it helps avoid any confusion or trouble for students and parents.”
Besides making it accessible to parents during the Mandatory Aeries Data Confirmation process, the digital handbook can be accessed on the Sunny Hills website.
Under the “Students and Parents” option, visitors would need to hover the mouse pointer over it before moving the pointer down to the “Student Handbook” option; then once there, users would just click on that name.
The irony is that like with the hard copy printouts from the 1990s, not many students in the 2020s have ever bothered taking the time to access the digital version.
“I never had the need to search for the digital handbook,” Torrez said. “I usually depend on asking my teachers or administrators if I do have any confusion with the school regulations.”
A SPECIAL VERSION FOR THE SENIORS
In addition to the main student handbook, the administration created a specialized digital version for senior activities, which include upcoming events such as Grad Night, graduation information and Senior Checkout. It first debuted for the Class of 2024 in principal Craig Weinreich’s weekly digital newsletter on Friday, March 29.
“We don’t want the seniors to miss out on any events or opportunities that are available to them in their last remaining months of high school,” Bradley said. “It also includes any activities that are left in the year such as prom, the spring musical and our last assembly of the year.”
Some seniors said this specialized handbook is useful to refer to because it contains all necessary information for graduation events and requirements.
“I used it before to find out when I’m going to get my cap and gown,” senior Dylan Pak said. “I also told my friends to refer to it if they need any help on discovering senior information.”
THE HANDBOOK IS ADDRESSED TO STUDENTS, NOT TEACHERS
While some mysteries remain with the history of the Student/Lancer Handbook, one thing that school officials and teachers know for certain: It’s meant for those at all grade levels to learn how to advocate for themselves.
“If [a student] has a question, then it is their job as a student to look through the handbook and try to figure out the answer,” Kim said. “They have to access it themselves and not just wait for everything to be answered for them.”
