A New Start

It may be hard to believe, but we're halfway through the school year already. By most measures, we had a good first semester. One area of concern, however, dealt with attendance patterns for many of our students.

With encouragement from the Board of Education, we attempted to change our attendance policy from previous years. In the past, students that accumulated three (3) unexcused absences earned an "attendance F" despite their academic standing in the class. The same held true for students that accumulated eleven (11) excused absences. Members of the Board of Education felt the previous policy was too punitive and damaging to a student's grade point average.

So with the start of the 2008-09 school year we relaxed the attendance policy. Although it never officially became Board policy, the directive was to eliminate the concept of "attendance F's". The end result was that there was really no cap on the number of days a student could miss during this previous semester.

What we learned during this trial period is that too many of our students lack the maturity to act responsibility. We had far too many students "skip" individual class periods or entire days, resulting in a large spike of unexcused absences.

More problematic, however, was that we witnessed a significant increase in the number of parents that called in their sons and daughters for excused absences. Comparing '08 to '09, from the start of school until just before the holidays, there was an increase of more than 20% home call-ins. The number of students that exceeded the previous threshold for excused absences increased dramatically. Missing that much school has an extremely negative impact on student performance.

For example, a significant number of our students missed more than 60 hours of class time in the time frame listed above. And there really is no excuse. In the real world, employees would be terminated early on.

So there will be a change second semester. Although we won't know the details for another couple of weeks or until the Board of Education adopts the new regulations, there will be a cap on absences once again. And although we won't issue "attendance F's", students that exceed the cap will be removed from any class where absenteeism is excessive.

We really need cooperation from parents with this change. Missing a single day equates to six hours of instruction, with five days leading to 30 hours missed. Those are lectures, labs and discussions that just can't be made up no matter the efforts of all involved. Please help us maximize student achievement by doing your part.