STUDENT WANTS TO CROSS STAGE

AILING COURTLAND HIGH SENIOR A FEW CREDITS SHORT OF GRADUATING WITH CLASSMATES
The Free Lance–Star
June 2, 2008

 
Barely more than 5 feet tall, Christopher Saffy almost disappears in his T–shirt. His voice seems fit for someone younger, not someone within days of finishing his fourth year of high school.

Saffy, 18, is a senior at Courtland High School in Spotsylvania County. He has had
kidney problems since birth.

Since middle school, he and his friends have pictured themselves walking across the stage at graduation. On Saturday, many of them will get that chance.

But not Saffy.

Four courses short of graduating, he will finish at Gates Alternative High School in the fall.

But he still wants to march across the stage on Saturday, when, for a day, everything else just wouldn’t seem as important.

“It seemed like something that would never happen,” Saffy said, sitting on the front steps of his house before class one day.

FALLING BEHIND
At 2, Saffy had a kidney transplant, but the organ stopped functioning when he was 11. He may get another transplant after high school, with a donation from his uncle.

For now, hemodialysis cleans out his system. Three days a week, he drives to a Stafford clinic for the three-hour procedure.

It has kept him out of school until noon most days.

“When I got back to school, school was almost over,” he said. “I had, like, a class and a half left, if that.”

He wanted a regular schedule “to try to make it best for the last year of high school.”

But dialysis takes a lot out of him. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Friday he spends the bulk of the day recovering.

This past winter, as in previous years, he fell behind on his schoolwork and returned to Homebound, a program for students who aren’t physically or mentally able to attend school.

It meant Saffy wouldn’t see his friends or have the high school experience he wanted.

“It does get boring and kind of lonely,” he said.

Determined to finish on time, Saffy asked his teachers at Courtland if he could make up the work he missed. Some of them told him he had missed too much and he couldn’t graduate, or even participate in the ceremony.

It was frustrating, he said. Saffy said he was comforted knowing he was so close to
graduating.

NO EXCEPTIONS
According to school division policy, no student with more than two deficiencies (an
incomplete course, a failed Standards of Learning exam or a combination of the two) walks at graduation.

Director of Secondary Education Don Alvey said that to his knowledge, no exceptions have been made since the guideline was implemented four or five years ago.

“We’ve tried our best to stick to it for the past five years at least,” Alvey said.

Saffy’s appeal to school administrators was unsuccessful. He still could appeal to
Superintendent Jerry Hill or the School Board, Alvey said.

Courtland Principal Michael Bedwell declined to discuss Saffy’s case, citing privacy issues.

The school has made some exceptions for Homebound students, who typically can’t participate in school activities, Bedwell said.

Saffy, for instance, went to the prom this year. But no exceptions can be made for
graduation.

“I would dearly love to see him march,” Bedwell said. “I wish I could.”

Kim Lett, youth services transition specialist at the disAbility Resource Center, attended a meeting with Saffy and school administrators earlier this month and said she sees both sides. The school division is afraid of setting a precedent, she said.

Yet she feels for Saffy.

“I think the important thing is, he’s getting his education,” she said. “In the end the big thing is, ‘Did I get my education?’”

‘WHAT’S IT TEACHING HIM?’
Aimee Pullin wants Saffy to walk across the stage on graduation day. She and her friends have collected about 100 signatures on a petition they hope will change administrators’ minds.

Pullin, also a senior at Courtland, has known Saffy since middle school and was among a group of friends who took him to the prom.

She has seen his health deteriorate, she said, and he had to fight to be here.

“I honestly don’t know what it’s teaching him by not letting him walk,” she said. “That’s teaching him there’s really no hope for him to try any longer.”

Saffy said that if administrators don’t let him walk, he will attend graduation as a
spectator. He struggles to explain why graduating with his friends is important.

“Well, um, because just to be there with everyone ” he said, his voice trailing off. “I mean, just to be there and walk across the stage while they do. That would be cool.”

After high school, Saffy might take a year off before enrolling in Germanna Community College.

He already knows what he wants to be: a kidney doctor.

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