As we emerge from the winter flu season, many students are still suffering through sicknesses — and still going to school even though they know it’s not good for them.

Clearly, this is problematic. Besides missing out on the rest that they need to recover, sick students who come to school run the risk of spreading their pathogens and the misery that comes with being sick to a whole new host of people.

Sick students know that. Yet they still choose to go to school because, they think skipping a school day is often not worth falling behind on classwork and assignments.

If the school wants to encourage students to stay home while sick — which it definitely should — teachers need to allow more lenient conditions for those who are absent. Of course, many teachers already have reasonable sick policies, but a single class with draconian sick policies means the student will be at school and exposed to others, even if for only a period.

A few policies are particularly problematic. Oftentimes, as a consequence of missing a test due to sickness, students are given make-up tests harder than the original one or the student will be forced to take a midterm in replacement. In some cases, students are unable to receive credit for a class assignment or make up an assessment, making it in obligation for the student to attend class.

Also, some teachers double the next assessment to make up for the assessment that the student had missed. Although this may seem like a more reasonable policy, students should not have to receive a consequence for something largely outside of the their control.

Teachers should also provide more days to make up the classwork and homework that the student had missed, since it only adds more pressure for the student to finish all the work they missed in their classes in one day. The current school-wide policy, which gives the student the number of days they missed as an extension to the deadline, seems fair.

But often the student needs to learn concepts taught in class on their own, a task which only adds to the existing make up work. Especially in a math class where lectures are harder to make up or learn on your own, students find it simpler to attend class and save the extra efforts.

Because of the current sick policies, rather than missing a day of school, students have reason to believe that it is better to suffer through the school day rather than take time to heal. Even though some may think that students make sickness as an excuse to stay home from school and take advantage of the extra time they have to do more work, their absences in the classes add up to become more stress for the student.

Even though some students certainly do abuse the current sick policies and feign illnesses on test days to gain additional time to study, a more lenient set of rules will not drastically change the norm; lax students will continue to skip school and motivated students will ultimately still have to complete the same work — ideally when they’re feeling better again.

After all, when it comes down to it, the health of students should be the school’s top priority.