The Board of Education recognizes that regular school attendance is a major component of academic success. Through implementation of this policy, the Board expects to reduce the current level of unexcused absences, encourage full attendance by all students, maintain an adequate attendance recordkeeping system, identify patterns of student absence and develop effective intervention strategies to improve attendance.

Notice

            To be successful in this endeavor, it is imperative that all members of the school community are aware of this policy, its purpose, procedures and the consequences of non-compliance. To ensure that students, parents, teachers and administrators are notified of and understand this policy, the following procedures shall be implemented.

·        The attendance policy will be included in student handbooks and will be reviewed with students at the start of the school year.

·        Parents will receive a plain language summary of this policy by mail at the start of the school year. Parents will be asked to sign and return a statement indicating that they have read and understand the policy.

·        When a student cuts class or is absent without excuse, designated staff members will notify the student’s parent(s) and review the attendance procedures with them.

·        A back-to-school event will be held at the beginning of each school year to explain this policy and stress the parent’s responsibility for ensuring their children’s attendance.

·        School newsletters and publications will include periodic reminders of the components of this policy.

·        The district will provide a copy of the attendance policy and any amendments thereto to faculty and staff. New staff will receive a copy upon their employment.

·        All faculty and staff will meet at the beginning of each school year to review the attendance policy to clarify individual roles in its implementation.

·        Copies of this policy will also be made available to any community member, upon request.

Excused and Unexcused Absences

            Excused absences are defined as absences due to personal illness, illness or death in the family, impassable roads or weather, religious observance, quarantine, required court appearances, medical/dental appointments that cannot be scheduled outside the school day, approved college visits, military obligations, or such other reasons as may be approved.

All other unapproved absences, tardiness or early departures are considered unexcused absences.

            All absences must be accounted for. It is the parent’s responsibility to notify the school office on the morning of the absence or tardiness and to provide a written excuse upon the student’s return to school.

General Procedures/Data Collection

·        Attendance will be taken during each class period at the secondary level and on a daily basis on the elementary level. (Note: It is not necessary to record student attendance for each period if the student does not change classrooms.)

·        At the conclusion of each class period or school day, all attendance information shall be compiled and provided to the appropriate individual(s) responsible for attendance.

·        The nature of an absence (full day, class cut) shall be coded on a student’s record.

The following codes will be used to identify the reason for absence, tardiness or early departure:

·        Student absence/class cut data shall be available to be reviewed by attendance officers or other appropriate school personnel.

·        The following individuals will be responsible for overseeing monitoring attendance and initiating appropriate action: elementary schools – Principal, Middle School –Assistant Principal and High School – Assistant Principal.

·        Where additional information is received from a student during a student/staff conference that requires corrections to be made to a student’s attendance records, such correction will be made immediately. Notice of such a change will be sent to appropriate school personnel (i.e., homeroom teachers, attendance officer, etc.)

·        Attendance data will be analyzed periodically to identify patterns or trends in student absences.

·        Where consistent with other school practices, teachers and staff shall detain students in the hallways who are absent from a class period without excuse and refer the students to the Building Principal or Assistant Principal.

·        Continuous monitoring will be conducted to identify students who are cutting class.

Attendance Incentives

            Individual schools may design and implement systems to acknowledge a student’s efforts to maintain or improve school attendance. Each school will maintain an attendance honor roll, which will be published quarterly identifying those students with perfect and near perfect attendance at the elementary level and perfect attendance at the secondary level.

Disciplinary Consequences

            Generally, disciplinary sanctions will be imposed progressively. This means a pupil’s first unexcused absence, tardiness or early departure will usually merit a lighter penalty than subsequent violations.

            In accordance with the district’s Code of Conduct, the following range of disciplinary sanctions may be imposed to discourage unexcused pupil absences, tardiness and early departure.

·        Written or oral notification to parent

·        Detention

·        Suspension from recreation participation

·        Suspension from athletic participation

·        Suspension from social or extracurricular activities (i.e., proms, senior celebrity night, etc.)

·        Suspension from other privileges (i.e., senior lunch privileges, senior parking, etc.)

·        In-school suspension

The Board of Education recognizes the important relationship between class attendance and student performance. Consequently, during each marking period a student’s final grade will be based on classroom participation as well as the student’s performance on homework, tests, papers, projects, etc. Students (K-12) are expected to attend all scheduled classes. Consistent with the importance of classroom participation, any absence from class which is not made up shall result in the loss of points from the student’s class participation grade for the marking period. The manner in which the loss of points may be reflected will vary according to the school level. Any student who misses a class is expected upon his or her return to consult with his/her teachers regarding missed work. At the early elementary grades parents are expected to consult with the teacher regarding missed work. If the absence is excused, the student may earn his or her classroom participation grade by arranging an assignment with the teacher to cover the work missed.

In implementing the policy set forth above, students who are unable to attend a class on a given day/period due to their participation in a school sponsored activity (i.e., music lessons, field trips, etc.) may arrange with their teachers to make up any work missed. This also applies to any student who is absent from school due to illness who either receives home instruction from the district or makes arrangements with the teacher to make up the work missed.

Students will be given the opportunity to turn in a late assignment for inclusion in the calculation of the performance portion of their final grade. Makeup opportunities must be completed by a date specified by the student’s teacher for the class or subject in question.

At the secondary level, any student with more than nine absences for one-half year or 18 absences for a full year that are not made up will not receive credit for that course. To ensure that parents and students are aware of the implications of this minimum attendance requirement, the teacher and other appropriate school personnel will counsel the student and contact the parent by telephone and mail at appropriate intervals prior to the student reaching nine or 18 absences. Only students with excused absences will be given the opportunity to make up a test for the inclusion in the calculation of the performance portion of their final grade.

Board Approval Date:         October 12, 1983

Revised:                                 December 15, 1993

Revised:                                 June 19, 2002

5130R

HIGH SCHOOL ATTENDANCE REGULATIONS

Rationale

The necessity for maintenance of proper attendance and punctuality is a mutual responsibility of the students, the home school. Parents/guardians must encourage good attendance on the part of the students, and the school must minimize the disruptions of instructional time that interfere with the learning process.

Regulations

For a student to receive a marking period grade of 65 or better, s/he may not be absent more than 10% of the time during any marking period, without having completed all missed work to the satisfaction of the instructor.

In computing the grade for a marking period, all instances of non-attendance will be considered as absences with the following exceptions:

1.      school-sponsored trips and activities

2.      pre-arranged office appointments

3.      days of suspension from school

4.      days when receiving home teaching

In computing grades, instructors will determine the number of class absences for individual students using the attendance data from the computerized student management system. For those students whose absences total more than 10% of the total number of school days in a semester or year and adequate make-up assignments have not been completed for excused absences (following the guidelines for provision of missed work for absences), all sources of evaluation, i.e. test grades, quiz grades, presentations, reports, homework assignments, etc., will be computed on the basis of 49 as the minimum grade.

The grade of NC (No Credit) may be given to a student who has missed more than 10% of the school days in the course. The following procedure must be followed for the student to be given a No Credit:

            1. Parent is notified directly by the teacher.

2. An excessive absence/lateness referral is completed by the teacher.

3. A parent conference is held with the student, teacher, counselor, and

                administrator present.

In the event of an absence, students are required to meet with the class instructor to discuss the nature of the work missed, steps required to satisfactorily ensure its completion and date due.

In a situation where prolonged or recurring health problems necessitate absences exceeding the number allotted in this policy, written proof of medical difficulties should be presented to the school health office detailing the nature and extent of the problem. In such cases, personal contact by parent/guardian should be made with a child’s instructors to explain the problem and seek alternative means of successfully completing missed subject matter and class work.

The problem of in-school truancy, i.e. cutting specific classes, while present for some is unacceptable behavior. Students who are in-school truants are required to make up time in detention hall commensurate with time missed from class. Where students are found to be illegally absent from class, parents will be notified of the illegal absence and where a pattern of illegal absence from class appears, a parent conference will be held to discuss the matter.

Procedures

1. When a student accumulates FOUR absences during the first half of a semester (10 weeks), or has reached NINE absences during a full semester (20 weeks), the instructor will contact the parent by telephone and in writing with the following information:

a.         number of days of absence

b.         a statement of district policy regarding denial of credit and the

      consequences reiterated

2. Punctuality to school and to each class period is critical to the maintenance of proper decorum and to the integrity of instructional time. No student may be admitted to first period class without a pass after fifteen minutes of elapsed time. Students who have more than fifteen minutes of lateness are to be sent to the late sign-in room for the remainder of the period. Students who habitually arrive late to any class are to be referred to the attendance office using the excessive absence/lateness referral on the third occasion for follow-up. Detention may be assigned for lateness to class or school.

Appeals Process

A committee composed of three persons, one teacher (selected from a rotating pool of faculty, but not the teacher of the student making the appeal), an administrator supervising the staff of the course under appeal and a pupil personnel support person will consider special cases and make a confidential report to the principal, who will render a final decision on the appeal.

Revised:                      December 13, 2006