Why sweat it steronz? You know why your kids have been absent and you have been taking responsibility to insure that your kids are keeping up despite their absences. I would suspect that you are the exception. In my experience with public schools, there is a high rate of kids (even younger age) that miss a lot of school for a myriad of reasons and their parents aren’t as diligent as you are.
You shouldn’t expect yourself to be excluded from the form letter that is sent out for absences just because you already spoke to your kids teachers about it. Interesting that your school considers family vacations an “excused absence”. That has never been an excused absence in any of the schools my children have attended, private or public.
How so? No, it’s not a “woosh”. You seem to think that all they can do to you is send you sternly worded letters. There’s a lot more they can do, and depending on the age of your child and the laws in your state, 11 absences puts them well within the “chronic truancy” level requiring family court intervention.
Please note, I don’t share the opinion that this is necessarily a problem. I totally get why your particular kid missed so many days, and I think you did a great thing as far as the benefits go. I just don’t think you have a grasp of the risks. Because, yes, schools consider 11 days a whole lot.
Only family vacations with prior approval are excused. We had to go to the office and do a form, if they refused to sign off the form we could have pulled the kids anyway and those would have been marked as unexcused. I suppose it’s likely that if my kids were older they wouldn’t have approved.
In our previous district “excused” simply means the parents are aware of and ok’d the absence (as opposed to the child being truant).
There were three categories:
unexcused (truant)- it’s up to the teacher to allow make up work
excused (parents know)- it’s up to the teacher to allow make up work
approved (doctor’s notes, religious holidays etc)- make up work must be provided
A child could only have a certain number of absences in each category before consequences came into play (with very few in the unexcused, limited number in excused and more in approved).
Our current district does away with the excused/approved distinction, which is nice. I can keep my kid home when he’s ill and not have to go to the doc just to get a note to make it an approved absence. There is a reasonable number of allowed absences that covers everything I can imagine needing to do. I think there is some rule about multiple days in a row needing a doc note or something.
I think that’s the same thing this school does. I read through the guidance and it says that all personal illnesses may require a doctor’s note, but it’s up to the school’s discretion. I guess we can add that to the list of things the school can do to annoy/inconvenience me beyond sternly worded letters, they could start requiring that I take my kid to the doctor every time they need to stay home.
At 5 *unexcused *absences, a letter goes home to the parents and the school no longer has any discretion about doctors’ notes – they’re required. At 10 unexcused absences, there’s a mandatory attendance review. But no word on excused/approved absences.
i Can tell you (now that my youngest is a high school junior- almost senior) that we did pull them out once for a family vacation for 5 days when they were in early elementary school. After about K or 1st grade it became a huge hassle for them to miss school. They did so much in the classroom (including music and art projects) that a packet of worksheets can’t make up. Plus, It was incredible annoying to have them working on school work while we were on vacation.
We only did it for real family emergencies (like when their grandfather died). They get winter break, two breaks in spring and summer- we just made it work.
That’s probably what they’re aiming for. But try reading the letters – the letters your district sends, say, or the letter steronz received – from the perspective of someone who doesn’t believe the system is on their side, who may believe it is against them. Not in a paranoid “the CIA is in my tooth fillings” way, just, they’re not on the culture’s Approved List for whatever reason.
This was not, as you sporadically concede, constructive or positive. Let’s say it’s 10 percent shitty parents, 10 percent desperate parents, and 80 percent – you’re not all that clear on what other categories you’re envisioning, but fine. Even for those 80 percent, I fail to see how starting with a scrupulously non-confrontational approach can be a bad option.
If your wife talked to the teachers in passing–say, at dismissal–it may totally have slipped the teachers’ minds to record it as excused. Or if there are multiple teachers, maybe just one teacher flaked.
Maybe the database designer responsible for sending out these letters screwed up and sent them out for total absences, not just unexcused ones.
Maybe there’s a dumb state law requiring the letter to be sent out.
In any case, I’d make a quick call to the principal to verify that those absences are counted as excused; it might help the principal improve the system, if nothing else.
Or this (snarky second and third sentences removed) is great advice.
I honestly don’t know what the best answer is. Our district sends out similar letters. But when, every few years, I have a chronically truant student, I don’t think the letters help. What helps is the school social worker contacting the family and explaining in detail what the truancy laws are–or sometimes just taking out a warrant for the parents’ arrest on truancy charges. Sometimes that last step is the only thing that will get parents to bring their kids to school.
The parents who take their kids on long vacations and contact the teacher in advance are IME never the parents whose children are suffering. That may change in high school, I dunno; when I was a kid, I went on a monthlong trip in second grade, and a three week trip in high school, and maintained high grades (although apparently my parents didn’t let my teachers know about the high school trip, leading to at least one teacher withdrawing me from her class–but that’s another story).
Yeah, this kind of thing is part of the reason my daughter is in private school. The combination of condescending arrogance, laziness, and assembly-line attitude toward kids is intolerable.
I feel your pain, and just reading the note makes me angry.
The automatic assumption that if your kid’s not in school you’re a bad parent is insane.