IHOP For First Period

Posted on March 5, 2015 by Amaany Ruiz in News

Maria Montiel
Abril Chuvac
Chronicle Reporters

Many students arrived at IHOP early on Tuesday, Mar. 3 hoping to receive free pancakes for giving a $1 donation, but when students did this during school hours, Assistant Principal Dr.Travis Brandy and Dean Essick Allen take it in their hands to bring them back to school.
IHOP was having their annual National Pancake Day celebration. A donation of at least $1 would get customers a short stack of buttermilk pancakes to raise money for the Children’s Miracle Network Hospital.

“It was really delicious, I mean who doesn’t love cheap pancakes in the morning” said SAS, 10th grader, Christian Vasquez.
Many students attended this event at the IHOP across the street from Hollywood High, but returned to their first period late or did not show up.
Dr. Brandy, said “ The issue that I have is when student’s parents have sent them to school to arrive to school ON TIME.”

 
According to the attendance office and other administrators, there were 35 to 50 students that were either absent or tardy to their first period.  Allen said that “there were other students from different schools, they were not all from Hollywood.” These students were still waiting to get seated after the 8 a.m. bell had rung.

 
“My surprise was that it happend at all, I came in this morning not knowing it was a special day, so when I got the call that there were students over there, I was shocked,” said  Allen. “I didn’t hear anything in the media about it, but apparently everybody else did.”

 
Brandy and Allen both seemed to agree that the issue was not against students going to IHOP, the problem was that they decided to go during school hours when they should have been in class. This of course could have led to problems with the LAPD and the school’s police or “even the sheriff depending on the area.”

 
Some students names were written down and others were kindly pointed to go to class. The punishment varied depending on the student and their unique situation, they could have just informed their parents that they were truant from school for the period, or they might have been given a more serious punishment.
“Since it just happen this morning and we have WASC going on, I haven’t gone through all the names,” said Dr. Brandy. “I know a large majority of the kids there, some by sight others by name.”

 
The school administrators had contacted the IHOP manager regarding what happened, and the IHOP manager mentioned that they were taking away tables for paying customers.

 
Other than the students attendance, the fundraiser was a big success, and IHOP raised a decent amount of money for a good cause and no one got hurt, despite the number of people in the restaurant.

For more details on IHOP Pancake Day tune here