School attendance should be a high priority. Youths’ well-being depends on it

When I was young, my friends and I did chores at home such as cutting grass, raking leaves and shoveling snow. It wasn’t a big deal because that was the expectation. My brother and I were fortunate enough to have parents who paid an allowance, but that didn’t mean we had a choice to not do what was required of us. Our parents wanted to teach us the value of a dollar and the payoff that comes from hard work.