« oh come on | Main | okay how stupid was this guy »

oh come on

Wis. Student Sues Over Summer Homework

Email this story

Printer friendly format



By RYAN NAKASHIMA
Associated Press Writer

January 20, 2005, 10:20 PM EST


MILWAUKEE -- Peer Larson was days away from a dream camp counselor job last June when his new high school math teacher dropped a sheaf of assignments on his desk that turned his summer of fun into a headache.

One of 30 staffers who handled 500 campers six days a week, the 17-year-old was hard pressed to finish the three pre-calculus assignments for his honors math class at Whitnall High School -- one of which was 16 pages long. They had to be mailed in three installments over the summer break.

"It didn't completely ruin my summer, but it did give me a lot of undue stress both at home and at work," Larson, a high school junior, told The Associated Press Thursday. "I just didn't have the energy or the time for it."

Larson and his father, unhappy with the response of school officials to their complaint of an unfair workload, have filed a lawsuit in Milwaukee County Circuit Court seeking to bar mandatory homework over the summer break in the Whitnall district and throughout Wisconsin.

They argue that school officials have no authority to make students who aren't in school in the summer do homework and then grade them on it, because the required 180-day school year is over.

Post a comment

(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)