The Windham School Committee elicited comments Wednesday from the public about a proposal requiring seniors to perform community service work to earn their diplomas.

If approved, the policy would require seniors to perform 10 hours of volunteer work in 2009, and add 10 hours per year to a maximum of 40 for the class of 2012 and beyond.

The policy would create a community service coordinator to solicit requests for work and then require guidance counselors to keep tabs on the work done by more than 200 students.

“I’m in favor of it, if it’s done right,” said school committee member Mike Duffy this week. Others like Nicole Lajoie, president of the Sebago Lake Rotary Club, do not find the volunteer hours required of students to be excessive.

Opposing the idea is not about whether it can be done right or whether time spent is excessive or not. Holding a diploma over the head of a student because they do not donate their time to an organization the school finds acceptable is wrong.

A sense of community is not built by forcing labor on segments of it, no matter how much the services may be needed. Why should students be the only ones to perform community service? Why is it more valid to ask a student to perform an approved task than to ask someone registering a boat to clean the public landing in the summer?

It is not that requiring students to perform community service will warp them so they would either be resentful and do poor work or never reach out to help again after graduating.

It is also not a case where every student is so overburdened that what amounts to an hour or two a week in a school year at the most is onerous. Plenty of students do volunteer, but volunteer is the key verb. Students who list a wide range of activities including community service can also gain an advantage when applying for colleges.

Also left undefined is whether a community service coordinator would be a budgeted, paid position created by the Windham School Committee or a task assigned to a staff member? Should the committee be asking taxpayers to pay for a new staff member dedicated to ensuring their children work without compensation?

The benefits of volunteering are not in question here. What is in question is at what point a school system should stop determining how seniors who are old enough to drive, work for a living, and perhaps be old enough to vote need to spend free hours away from school or school assignments.

The proposal would be more palatable as part of the curriculum included in the course of a school year during school days. The idea that students are old enough to make choices of how they contribute to the community away from school needs to be respected.

David Harry, editor