Attendance Policy

Attendance Policy




For many students attending Clarke County’s Classic City Performance Learning Center, the attendance policy clearly states that students can miss no more than four days of school for the entire semester. Students who miss more than four days will be automatically dropped from their class or classes. I think this policy is more harmful to students than helpful. I myself and many other students have had many problems with this policy. I think the school board should extend the attendance policy for many reasons.

Students may miss more than four days and may be forced to drop from the class, which delays their graduation. What if a student is able to do all the work but misses more than four days? This often happens with many students. Students complete all the work and get passing grades for the course, but they get no credit for the class because of too many absences. What’s the difference between these students and students who’ve gotten a lower grade but get to carry on because they didn’t miss that many days? This can be a real disadvantage to students who did as just as much work but can’t carries on because of their absences.
What if a student wants to take a planned family vacation? Students should be able to take vacations like these with their family, especially if it was planned in advance. If a student is leaving to go on a planned family vacation, they could go to all their teachers and get their make up work and turn it all in when they come back from their vacation. This is an alternative plan other than just not letting students go period.

Many other students here at classic city have children or other siblings they have to help take care of. Members of the students family may be sick causing the student to be absent from school their self. Students also may have family emergencies, like death in the family, member in the hospital; a member may be sick or anything of that nature. Students would not be able to give a doctors excuse or excuse for anything like that. The School board should also start excepting excuses written by the parents or guardians. You cant always except for students to have a doctor’s excuse for everything.

Many other students may miss more than four days for legitimate reasons but may not be able to provide that proof. Many students do not have any insurance, so how may I ask you can they get a doctors excuse when they can’t even go to a doctor and get proper health care? This goes back to my other point that students should be able to get their parents to write them excuses with their parents or guardian signature and be approved by administration. I know the administration thinks that this could be a big issue considering students may write the letter themselves and sign their parent’s name. That’s why I propose when turning in a letter the parent provide phone number or email address to provide verification that the student has been out due to legitimate reasons.

As you can see there are many reasons for a student attending Classic City High School to miss more than four days due to sick leave, family vacations and many other private reasons. The school board needs to get the attendance policy fixed so that more students can strive to do better because as you have just read many students graduation gets stopped or delayed due to this big inconvience.