People who experience periods should be allowed to miss school without consequences (i.e. tardies, unexcused absences, etc.)

Periods can bring people a lot of pain that distracts us from work, causes us to feel sick, feel bad to the point we can't move, and overall can cause problems until the pain goes away.

Sometimes when students are on their periods, they may ask to sit out and catch up on work later, and many staff members tend to lack understanding when it comes to pain and how bad it is for some people- especially those who don't experience periods. What makes it worse is that schools don't allow students to carry pain medication on them, and while that's understandable to an extent, it also prevents us from solving the problem. I understand that most schools allow us to put medication in the nurses office, but that's not very convenient for most students as it causes us to completely leave our class and miss work. It'd be much easier if we could carry a pill or two in our backpack (without getting in trouble) and take them as needed.

The pain ranges between each person but it can be very severe for many, many people. I researched a little bit and found that cramps can be compared to heart attacks: "Menstrual cramps, or Dysmenorrhea as it's technically called, has finally been ruled as painful as having a heart attack. Professor of reproductive health at University College London, John Guillebaud, told Quartz that patients have described the cramping pain as 'almost as bad as having a heart attack"

Also- I as well as many other students have had to deal with teachers and staff members not allowing us to go change our tampons or pads, causing us to sit there and bleed in the middle of class or other activities. I know many people who ended up bleeding through their clothes just because teachers/staff don't excuse students for 5 minutes to fix the issue.

There is also an issue where staff tend to assume students are lying about their period, and don't let them leave just based off of a wrong assumption. I went around my school and surrounding schools to get some input on this issue.

Here are a few quotes from students:

1. "I always throw up for the first 1-2 days, the fatigue is consuming and I'm not learning because I'm in agony, I'm only being a distraction to the other students and wasting everyone's time."

2. "My school doesn't allow us to leave class at all"

3. "Period pains can get so bad to the point where they don't allow the person going through it to function."

4. "I hate how when we are on our periods they won't always let us go to the bathroom or we have to wait. Some girls experience way more cramp pain than others and going to school doesn't help us with that pain."

5. "I feel like it's completely stupid. Some girls have extreme period cramps and heavy bleeding. The cramps can get so bad that you pass out or fall to the floor in pain. Heavy bleeding is when you have to change your pad/tampon multiple times within an hour or two. Most classes don't let us up and leave. I've gotten yelled at by the dean for walking out of a class to change my tampon because my teacher wouldn't let me out. No we shouldn't get out of school for all the days we bleed. But we should be able to stay out of school on the worst 3-4 days of our period. 9/10 times we will do the school work if we are comfortable and cramping rather then in class and cramping."

I firmly believe that schools need to be more flexible when it comes to this issue. We should be allowed days off for periods just like we are allowed to be at home when we're sick. We need to be able to leave class to change our pads/tampons, we need some way to bring pain medications with us to school. I sincerely believe my demands are reasonable and warranted. My goal with this petition is to get the school board to see it and possibly change something.