Parents Missing school question

[ollieblueeyes]

I never give a reason why my daughter is off school. It's a message line and I as the parent don't feel as though I have to explain. No one has ever said anything and there is no lie! Simple!

 

[gymgal]

The best thing to do is to request an excused absence based on educational trip (independent study) and make sure you plan to go somewhere educational during any trips. The child can then do a project regarding the topic and hand it in.

If the principal doesn't excuse the absences, set up a meeting and inform him/her that they are going to look awfully silly filing a truancy report a 4.0 average student who also participates in a sport with intensive training. The zero tolerance policies (aka - no common sense at play) have gone too far and the only way it changes is for parents to routinely challenge the rules when they are applied inappropriately.

 

[gymmiemom]

Our school sends me warning letters every year. I don't tell the school anything. I call and say "suzie won't be in school today." They used to ask me why but now that they know my response will be, "doesn't matter because I'm her mother and I said she won't be at school."

In your situation, if they insisted on a reason I would bight the bullet and tell the truth. Maybe your battle now will make it easier I'm the future.

 

[MILgymFAM]

In your situation, if they insisted on a reason I would bight the bullet and tell the truth. Maybe your battle now will make it easier I'm the future.

I think if we were here in this district for the long haul I would bite the bullet. Since we are in our last school year here, I am inclined to keep it smooth sailing. I have looked up our new school district and they seem much easier to deal with.

 

[2G1B]

I have struggled with this. I just can't bring myself to lie about why they are out; but it really frustrates me to see those "unexcused" absences on their report cards. Where we are it isn't until the 7th unexcused absence before you have to deal with the social workers. (That is your 3rd notice - you get a call at 3 and a note at 5, then social worker letter at 7 and having to deal with that mess.) For us this year, older DD has had 2 unexcused absences for meets, she will have 3 more because at the end of the school year we are leaving the weekend before the last 3 days of school for a trip to Europe. So that puts her at 5. I had worried that we were going to end up with makeup snow days at the end of the year which would have been 6 days and definitely wold have put all of my kids over the limit. Had that happened I was going to offer to take them out those last 9 days of school to homeschool, then I would put them back in next year. Luckily we aren't adding the days to the end of the year though.

I find it crazy that my DD can miss a day of school to go do a chorus show. Or that in middle school, they could miss school to go to school related sports functions; but that they can't miss for a gymnastics meet. For us, for a number of reasons, we are most likely going to home/online school for middle school, so won't have to deal with it them and luckily our elementary school has been pretty reasonable.

 

[BachFlyer]

as an aside, pretty sure that the free and reduced luch program is a fedral one, subsidized by the fedetal government., not the states. regardless, his mention of that is quite rude. id offer to pay for those few lunches, just to make a point though

 

[MILgymFAM]

Agree completely. My kids have missed classroom time for chorus, band, cheerleading, odyssey of the mind, Astrocamp, swimming parties, and track. Not an eyelash batted. Somehow if an activity or sport originates outside the school it's not important or enriching. I call BS.

 

[raenndrops]

I liked my high school. I missed 19 days my senior year. I did have doctors excuses for some of them (7-8) and nobody said a thing. Of course, I HAD to miss at least 18 because my older brother missed 17-1/2 HIS senior year and I had to beat him... (no, why do you ask? I'm not competitive at all! lol)
My excuses were simple.
Please excuse "Raenndrops" because she was not in school yesterday.
Thanks,
"Her Dad"

The attendance officer never once asked for a "real" reason. Of course, the one time my dad actually had to write the note (after my eye surgery... he wrote one to turn in along with the dr note to stress the importance of NOT REMOVING my sunglasses under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES), he did get a call because Coach S said that the signature was a pretty good match, but the writer of this one spelled my name wrong on the note, so he wanted to make sure my dad knew somebody wrote the note Dad admitted that was the first one he had written all year. He also told Coach S that I usually write them myself (with his permission) because he couldn't spell my name correctly - ever, even when I would spell it for him before he wrote it down.

 

[wnl256]

She went one over when we had to go again for a funeral, and we already had our warning notice from the district.

Attending a funeral for an extended family member is considered, in most reasonable districts, an excused absence.

Also, a limit of only 3 unexcused absences before being declared truant is totally outrageous. Around here it is 10.

 

[Faith]

Thing is with gym meets the results often are found easily on the internet should anyone want to investigate..

I made an appointment with the head, explained where she was with her sport, that she was likely to miss school on a reasonably regular basis.

Turns out although UK laws regarding missing school are fairly strict generally (fined/court if taken out without permission, for a holiday, for anything other than sickness or family death really, and then 10 days max per year…), and our school will report you for unexplained absence, turns out there is a scheme in place ("Gifted and Talented"). All the head did was place her on the scheme, then time out of school is authorised if her school can't meet the demands of her talent.

As Margo says, it works in the schools favour as they can show they can deal with "additional needs" which now encompasses everything which needs help- from dyslexia to extraordinary abilities. DD actually got dragged in to meet the school inspectors recently, so the school could show how they met her educational needs as well as her sporting ones.

 

[Frase]

We tell the truth. Dd's gym is local and there are lots of kids from her school who attend rec classes there - including teachers kids. Whenever there is a big comp they put up posters wishing the girls luck and always put the results up afterwards - never mind they post good results on facebook and twitter etc - there is no way we could get away with it.

Our school has always been really supportive in 'encouraging and supporting her sporting abilities' even for travel days. It would just be marked as an authorised absence.

The other thing I try to do if it is feasible is get her in for registration which is first thing and just after lunch. If I grab her just after the second registration then no absence is recorded at all. Obviously this isn't always possible but can work for a travel day.

 

[Fliptwisttumble]

In your situation, I'd call her in sick.

I am SOOOOO glad that I just don't have to worry about this. Gym related absences aren't logged at her school, only sick days and or absences for family vacations.

 

[Faith]

The other thing I try to do if it is feasible is get her in for registration which is first thing and just after lunch. If I grab her just after the second registration then no absence is recorded at all. Obviously this isn't always possible but can work for a travel day.

DH says he had a mate who had 100% attendance all through school, but only ever attended 9-1, by doing the above. Stayed till lunchtime registration, then went home "sick" .

 

[profmom]

For our international friends: whatever the regs are (state and federal), the district and at times the individual school have some flexibility in how they implement them in the United States. So think of it this way: there is a federal context in which districts receive funding allocations, and those allocations can be reduced if federal standards for attendance are not met. Each state then passes its own laws and sets up regulations for implementation. Then the districts are responsible for establishing their own system for complying with the baselines from the state and federal government. Think of the state regulations as a floor below which the districts cannot go. They can, however, exceed that floor with stricter policies to make sure that they will be hitting the state and federal targets for attendance (and compliance with other standards).

MIL, given what you've told us, even though it might be satisfying to fight this, the risks are significant and the time you'd put into it would be substantial. Based on the regs, you might well win in the end, but it's harder to get a determination already made that absences were unexcused than to secure the "unexcused" label in the first place. Many districts will distinguish between missing school for a school-sponsored team or event and missing school for a private obligation, even if the private obligation looks the same (sporting event, musical performance, etc.). And some districts will run an even tighter ship than that -- we received warning letters last year because DS had exceeded the absence threshold for some of his core classes because he had been pulled out of them for his required in-school trombone lessons as a member of the band and jazz ensemble. (In that case, we had previously been advised to ignore the letters, and that's what we did, but they were disquieting.)

In general, one should never assume that law on the books = law on the ground.

Reader's Digest version: lie.

 

[Gymmonkeymomma]

Didn't read all replies. In our district policy it is at the "principal's discretion" whether something is excused or not. I mean, other than bereavement or illness. I have always told them the truth and never had an issue. They know DD (and also older DD prior to this) is one of the top students and makes up all her work. Her gym absences are not 'excused' but we have only come close to hitting the max # days one year.

 

[GymMom67]

We haven't had to face that yet here, but I can see it being an issue here as well (in Texas). They're very strict about how many days can be missed. I don't really hear about them dragging parents into court over it (although I'm sure they would if it was excessive), but I did have one person tell me that she had to file a petition because they were going to hold her son back (this was an honor student) because he had been in the hospital for an extended period of time.

However, official attendance is taken at 10:00 am, so if they are there at that time, they are officially present for the day. So does your state have any kind of rule like that, and she could just go to school for a little while the first day, then only be counted absent one day?

 

[MILgymFAM]

We haven't had to face that yet here, but I can see it being an issue here as well (in Texas). They're very strict about how many days can be missed. I don't really hear about them dragging parents into court over it (although I'm sure they would if it was excessive), but I did have one person tell me that she had to file a petition because they were going to hold her son back (this was an honor student) because he had been in the hospital for an extended period of time.

However, official attendance is taken at 10:00 am, so if they are there at that time, they are officially present for the day. So does your state have any kind of rule like that, and she could just go to school for a little while the first day, then only be counted absent one day?

TX is actually where we got pulled into the system over a family vacation. So, yeah, they are strict also (at least our district was). They dismissed us immediately once they found out hubby was a Marine and it was the only leave he had all year, and we hadn't been home in two years. They are very pro-military there too.

 

[Gymdad2]

DD's school district was very strict about unexcused absence, but they had a policy that allowed students to miss school for what was called an ALE (Alternative Learning Experience.) All of her meets for 12 years were excused this way.

 

[Seagull00]

I'm not dealing with this yet, but I don't foresee our school or district having a problem as long as they know ahead of time.

 

[scanlri]

We also live in a strict school district that takes parents to court over truancy issues. I have found that open and honest dialog with the school and teacher kept us out of major issues. I had permission to have my dd leave 15 minutes early to get to practice. I was always honest when she missed school for competitions or camps. It was still very stressful for dd as they were unexcused absences, so making up the work was difficult. The demands of gym vs school has gotten to the point where the school was honest and said we would do better finding a private school or homeschool as they were concerned that the amount of missed times may be a "red flag" to the county. I appreciated them working with us as much as they did - so I guess my only advice is to keep an open dialog. Good Luck!