I fully agree with all the first part of the roundtable comments about the policy allowing too many skipped days and that many kids will take advantage of every day given them. That is why I propose a stricter policy for unexcused absences. Students that skip should get immediate consequences. The current policy gives them 5 days a quarter to skip or 7 if they go to Saturday School! That is absurd.
But what is worse, is that they treat those with legitimate excuses the same as those that skip!

You say,
“This past fall, just 44 students failed. Given time, and the seriousness the school attaches to attendance, that number might plummet further.”
That number is so misleading! And it has been the key number that the small attendance committee gave to support this policy. This is the only number the Board noted for their decision.
However, I used the Freedom of information Act and obtained the actual raw data directly from the School Board office, instead of comparing unrelated numbers. They reported to me that 230 students received F’s for a nine week period as a result of their attendance policy! The 44 that they mention to others is the number of students that failed the whole semester just because of the policy. If a student got an F for a quarter because of the policy and then just gave up since they knew that if they were able to earn a C for the 2nd nine weeks, they would probably still average an F for the semester, their F for the semester was not included in the 44. It was included in another much larger number of students that “failed academically”.
Anyone that cares, especially a reporter, should not be lazy about getting their facts straight.

Comment by Carol Duvall — July 14, 2010 @ 7:59 pm