The utterly unthinkable happened. On the first week of February, an unusually large amount of students were absent from school, despite a strict policy giving students an X if they miss more than three days in a term.

The Patriots had recently won their sixth Super Bowl title against the Rams in a 13-3 game. That Tuesday, a large parade occurred in celebration of this victory. As New Englanders, students from Holbrook flocked in large numbers to watch this parade. However, this does not account for all 138 absent students, as some of them were genuinely sick.

Students and teachers had differing opinions on this unusual event, leading to some controversy. While students and teachers both agreed that the students have gone, teachers were largely surprised and were rather annoyed with the students’ whining.

Sophomore Carrietta Jacques said, “I’ve never gone to a Patriots game before and it was a fun opportunity to hang out with my friends, and the work I had to make up wasn’t all that bad.” She later added, “I feel like if you haven’t gone before, then it was justified in the fact that it’s a good opportunity. But, I understand the attention it got for how many kids did not go to school.”

Spanish teacher Mrs. McCann said, “I was a little surprised at how many kids were out. It was so many kids absent. But again, like I said, this isn’t going to happen forever. Right now, our teams are awesome, Boston teams are incredible, they keep winning. But it’s not gonna be like this forever, and right now. They’re [the students are] at an age where they can go do this, so they may as well.”

Reflecting back on that day, maybe the large amount of absentees that day wasn’t so utterly unthinkable after all.