An easy fix for Mesa district’s graduation row

Are Mesa school bureaucrats and board members about to grow a backbone? This week, the school district decided to appoint a task force to review its graduation policies after administrators refused to allow a cancer survivor to don a cap and gown and walk with his class last month.

Having zero tolerance of affairs of the heart, Mesa school officials denied Stephen Dwyer the chance to make a memory at Dobson High School.

This, because he was 21⁄2 credits short of the credits needed to graduate.

Never mind that the reason he was 21⁄2 credits short was because he spent his junior year battling leukemia, undergoing a bone-marrow transplant to save his life.

Never mind that he wasn’t asking for a diploma — that’ll come in the mail in December — or even to have his name called. Rules, Dwyer was told, are rules … never, never, ever to be bent, bowed or, God forbid, bounced out the nearest window.

And so Dwyer, Dobson’s senior class president, sat in the bleachers, watching as his classmates celebrated.

I wrote at the time that Dobson blew it. Not everybody agreed with me.

“Once the standard becomes subjective, then it becomes an issue of which student and family has the greatest need, most tragic illness, most horrific accident, and then which administrator in which school has the softest/kindest/whatever heart,” wrote Judith, a retired high-school guidance counselor. “And how many credits is it okay to lack — .5-or ? 2.5 credits is an entire semester’s worth of credits. I would think there are at least a few other deserving students who were less than 2.5 credits short who didn’t get to participate either. Who speaks for them?”

In other words, terrible, horrible things would have happened had Dwyer been allowed to walk with his classmates? Sorry, not buying it.

To its credit, the school board has decided to revisit the policy.

“As you’re well aware, there were concerns that came up with Dobson High School graduation,” board President Steven Peterson said during a Tuesday meeting. “There wasn’t enough time to modify the policy to be able to be fair and equitable to all of our students across the district.”

So now, a district task force will study the issue and even hold public hearings in the hope of deciding the issue in time for next year’s graduation. Really, is it that hard?

In order to save school officials a year of angst, may I suggest the following policy change?

Beginning with the Class of 2017, all students who undergo life-saving cancer treatments, then return, take a zero-hour class in order to make up for lost time and earn a 4.2 GPA their first semester back, can put on a freaking cap and gown and make a memory that’ll last for the rest of their lives.

Because sometimes, achievement can’t be measured in class credits.