My Pre-K 3 student will be missing 2 weeks in June for family weddings. Will we get in trouble?

[Anonymous]

I personally wouldn't do it for 2 full weeks, but in PK3, I wouldn't do much more than shrug if another parent did it. If this is happening every few months during the school year, that's another story.

We had to pull our PK3-er out for 5 days around holiday break due to various family events. We let the school know but still got the ominous robocall every single day letting us know that our child wasn't in school that day.

[Anonymous]

No you won't because it's not required. I took dd out of PK4 for 3 weeks and nothing happened. Only in K does truancy kick in.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:a family wedding that requires two weeks away? really? it's disingenuous to use a one-day wedding as your excuse for your child being out of school for two weeks. You are making this wedding as a reason for taking a two-week vacation. Own it.

If my husband had a relative in India getting married, then yes, we could be taking two weeks off to attend a family wedding. Plus Indian weddings can be multi-day affairs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:a family wedding that requires two weeks away? really? it's disingenuous to use a one-day wedding as your excuse for your child being out of school for two weeks. You are making this wedding as a reason for taking a two-week vacation. Own it.

If my husband had a relative in India getting married, then yes, we could be taking two weeks off to attend a family wedding. Plus Indian weddings can be multi-day affairs.

That's still using the wedding as an excuse for a longer trip. It's understandable, but it doesn't change what is actually going on here, which is that the OP wants to take a trip that coincides with a family wedding.

[Anonymous]

The OP's premise said "wedding out of state." I think the answers might/would be different for an international family trip.

[Anonymous]

She said "weddings" plural. Anyway, who are we to judge the importance of her trip?

[Anonymous]

Some of these comments are surprising to me. I work at a DCPS in Ward 8 and close to 15% of our kids have 30+ absences. It's up to the school to decide what they consider excused or not. Can someone who said unexcused absences get you kicked out of a school post a link to where that's a law? In my experience, you'll get the CFSA call, attendance conference and maybe court referral but I don't think there is legal ground to loose your seat.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Some of these comments are surprising to me. I work at a DCPS in Ward 8 and close to 15% of our kids have 30+ absences. It's up to the school to decide what they consider excused or not. Can someone who said unexcused absences get you kicked out of a school post a link to where that's a law? In my experience, you'll get the CFSA call, attendance conference and maybe court referral but I don't think there is legal ground to loose your seat.

DCPS parent handbook: https://dcps.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/dcps/publication/attachments/DCPS%20Parent%20Handbook_ENG-FINAL.pdf

See page 15: "If your child received a seat through the out-of-boundary lottery and has 10 unexcused absences or 20 unexcused tardies, they may be asked to return to their neighborhood school at the end of the school year."

Charters will have their own policies. The PCSB has a link on their website to an attendance and truancy policy but it's a dead link. It's definitely up to principal discretion and I know that at our school, OOB students with more than 10 unexcused absences have been told that they cannot reenroll the following year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our 3 year old will be missing 2 weeks of PK3 for family wedding out of state. A friend suggested he might be marked truant and potentially not able to return. Any truth to that?

Nope. Pre-K is not mandatory. The 10 absences policy starts in Kindergarten since K is compulsory. Hope this helps.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No you won't because it's not required. I took dd out of PK4 for 3 weeks and nothing happened. Only in K does truancy kick in.

+100

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some of these comments are surprising to me. I work at a DCPS in Ward 8 and close to 15% of our kids have 30+ absences. It's up to the school to decide what they consider excused or not. Can someone who said unexcused absences get you kicked out of a school post a link to where that's a law? In my experience, you'll get the CFSA call, attendance conference and maybe court referral but I don't think there is legal ground to loose your seat.

DCPS parent handbook: https://dcps.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/dcps/publication/attachments/DCPS%20Parent%20Handbook_ENG-FINAL.pdf

See page 15: "If your child received a seat through the out-of-boundary lottery and has 10 unexcused absences or 20 unexcused tardies, they may be asked to return to their neighborhood school at the end of the school year."

Charters will have their own policies. The PCSB has a link on their website to an attendance and truancy policy but it's a dead link. It's definitely up to principal discretion and I know that at our school, OOB students with more than 10 unexcused absences have been told that they cannot reenroll the following year.

Thanks for posting this.

To the ward 8 teacher, I'm a teacher too and personally have a family that isn't being asked back next year because they have been tardy over 22 times and are OOB.

[Anonymous]

So many of the replies on this thread are ridiculous. C'mon guys, it's not like convincing the school to kick out this one kid is going to magically open up a spot for your precious son or daughter.

In three pages of comments, how many were actual attempts to answer the question, rather than just "you should go to private school because your stupid family members have the audacity to get married in June"?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So many of the replies on this thread are ridiculous. C'mon guys, it's not like convincing the school to kick out this one kid is going to magically open up a spot for your precious son or daughter.

In three pages of comments, how many were actual attempts to answer the question, rather than just "you should go to private school because your stupid family members have the audacity to get married in June"?

I've posted a couple times on this thread. My child is in first grade, so I don't really care about the PK3 seat. I do care about the attendance policy in general, though, because it IS disruptive to have kids gone a lot and gone for extended periods of time, because at that age, it does take time to readjust to being in school. I also really don't appreciate people who are happy to take advantage of what public school has to offer and then treat it as daycare, or as optional.

School is not compulsory until kindergarten, which is why the attendance policies describe hard and fast rules for K+ students. But every handbook I've seen also says that even though school is not compulsory for PK3 and PK4, those students should also adhere to the attendance policies. Many DCPS (even many that are not very highly regarded) have wait lists of families who will happily send their kids to school unless the kid is sick. For someone to say, "Oh, but it's for A FAMILY WEDDING so that means that the policies don't apply to us" is arrogant.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So many of the replies on this thread are ridiculous. C'mon guys, it's not like convincing the school to kick out this one kid is going to magically open up a spot for your precious son or daughter.

In three pages of comments, how many were actual attempts to answer the question, rather than just "you should go to private school because your stupid family members have the audacity to get married in June"?

I've posted a couple times on this thread. My child is in first grade, so I don't really care about the PK3 seat. I do care about the attendance policy in general, though, because it IS disruptive to have kids gone a lot and gone for extended periods of time, because at that age, it does take time to readjust to being in school. I also really don't appreciate people who are happy to take advantage of what public school has to offer and then treat it as daycare, or as optional.

School is not compulsory until kindergarten, which is why the attendance policies describe hard and fast rules for K+ students. But every handbook I've seen also says that even though school is not compulsory for PK3 and PK4, those students should also adhere to the attendance policies. Many DCPS (even many that are not very highly regarded) have wait lists of families who will happily send their kids to school unless the kid is sick. For someone to say, "Oh, but it's for A FAMILY WEDDING so that means that the policies don't apply to us" is arrogant.

Chill. It really doesn't hurt your child, and many kids take no time to readjust (and, again, we're talking June, not mid-year).

[Anonymous]

Has OP even come back since the first post?