Unwritten rule barring Fayette County student from admission into National Honor Society
UNIONTOWN, Pa. (KDKA) - An apparently unwritten rule could be keeping students out of the National Honor Society.
Bailey Balint, a junior at Laurel Highlands School District with a 4.7 GPA, has been a straight-A student who has excelled in her education since the first grade, according to her family. Yet, Bailey was refused admission into the organization.
According to the superintendent at Laurel Highlands School District, a five-member faculty team reviews applications based on four categories: scholarship, service, leadership, and character. He told KDKA-TV that Bailey didn't meet at least one of those.
"From the time she started kindergarten, school has been our priority. Bailey wants nothing more than to do her best in everything she does," Bailey's mother, Lisa Balint, said.
They said Bailey took the SATs in eighth grade and was accepted to take college courses at Penn State at 14.
"She's on record at Penn State as being their youngest student at Fayette to ever attend," Balint said. "She's also the youngest student through Laurel Highlands to ever take the LSAT or to go to Penn State as an independent student."
This year, as a junior, Bailey was able to apply to join the National Honor Society. She and her family had no doubt she'd be accepted until she was denied this week.
"It was after she went through the whole application process, wrote the paper, and turned everything in for NHS, we got a letter that she was denied," Balint said. "She was denied based on her absences. What we come to find out is that the bylaws at LHS only have flagrant abuse of unexcused absences in their policy, which then, if that's what their policy says, should revert to the student handbook, which outlines it at 10."
Bailey's family said she missed six days, and most were not even full days.
"She missed one full day of school where she was sick with a fever in excess of 102, so she had to stay home. She had one day where she went in tardy; she went in at 8:51 a.m. She had a headache in the morning, laid back down, went back, [and] went to school. And she had four days where she left sick because she tried to go in, and couldn't make it through the day," Balint said. "Each of those four days that she left sick, I called into the school, had her excused, and the next day, sending the paper notice that we had to take in, Bailey turned it in [at] their office."
Balint said when you take the cumulative time of all the days her daughter has missed, it's equivalent to two and a half days of school.
The superintendent said the district's NHS standards, including missing six or more days of school, have been relayed to students "multiple times." He said being tardy counts as being absent.
Bailey said that one day she was tardy, she arrived at 8:51 a.m. School starts at 7:23 a.m.
She told KDKA-TV that the six-day "unwritten" rule can't be found in the bylaws anywhere.
"There's no evidence that this rule was even set in place anywhere before this time when I was denied, and I don't understand how they're going to let me fall to their fault," Bailey said. "I can guarantee there's not a student in that school who's seen that paper before in their life. They've never made this clear to us. And I'm not letting this go until the start of next school year."
According to the school handbook, students are allotted 10 absences per school year. The NHS section of the handbook says candidates who violate school rules, including unexcused absences, are grounds for a decision of no admittance.
"I'm not going to stop trying to get this fixed until there is a dead-set number of unexcused occurrences in their bylaws, and those bylaws are presented to every student, the first day of school, whether I have to hand out the papers myself or not," Bailey said.
She said NHS is a huge factor when it comes to getting college scholarships.
"Getting denied from this is, it's like, it feels like a huge setback in my career," Bailey said. "It plays a huge portion in receiving scholarship money to pursue your education to the furthest point you can."
Lisa Balint said they've hired an attorney and are reviewing all their options. She said they plan to fight so this doesn't happen to another student again.
"We should be taking these kids and elevating them up. You look at these children, and they're the ones that when they graduate and go on to do wonderful things, you want them to say, 'Hey, I graduated from Laurel Highlands High School.' You know, 'This is where I came from. And look what I did.' Not squash them when they're doing so well. And that's what it feels like right now," Balint said.
KDKA-TV has reached out to the National Honor Society, which said each school district has its bylaws, and it comes down to the school's standard of who is accepted.
Induction for NHS at Laurel Highlands is set for Friday.