Why do so many parents let their kids just stay home?

[Anonymous]

My second child has a serious auto-immune disease. We're in the process of getting her a 504 to help with future absences and late assignments.

My older child hardly ever missed school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My second child has a serious auto-immune disease. We're in the process of getting her a 504 to help with future absences and late assignments.

My older child hardly ever missed school.

Just curious - what would be included in 504 about absences? In our school, teachers are already required to accept late work without penalty. What else can you require teachers do for kids who are absent more than usual due to illness?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My second child has a serious auto-immune disease. We're in the process of getting her a 504 to help with future absences and late assignments.

My older child hardly ever missed school.

Just curious - what would be included in 504 about absences? In our school, teachers are already required to accept late work without penalty. What else can you require teachers do for kids who are absent more than usual due to illness?

I’m not the PP but my daughter missed a lot of school around five years ago for some medical issues and we augmented her 504 so that she had reduced assignments. Basically her teacher excused her from a lot of those little five point exit tickets that were going in the gradebook.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We don't know "these parents" of students you are talking about. What led you to post this?

This is the question teachers have for parents when you post about "these teachers" See that goes both ways. You aren't the gatekeeper of posts. And you certainly don't have to answer if you don't know these parents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you’ve ever spent time in a classroom, you’d see how much ‘filler’ time there is.

There is little to no filler time in my classroom.
And to PP who said their notes and recordings are posted for students to catch up on their own - I would love to have a class full of students who all are capable to learn material on their own. Sometimes this happens (lesson is easy enough and student is able to find time to complete practice tor missed lessons on top of current lessons) but most often this is not the case.
Obviously, life happens and students must miss a class every now and then. But there are consequences that I outlined in my original post above. Parents who take kids out of school for vacations (saying missing school is not a big deal) are robbing their kids of practice time with immediate feedback that teacher provides. They do it again and again. Then they don’t understand why their kid is struggling later in a year or two years down the road.

There is filler in EVERY class. Even my kid's AP math class has had filler time/days. Less than others, for sure. But it's still there.

AP math teacher and I call B.S. The timeline to teach all the concepts required for the AP Exam is so tight that there is no such thing as filler time in AP classes. Maybe students are given a review day before the test so that they are able to go over the last quiz that they just took in the unit , study in class and ask any questions they have, but that's not a filler day. My AP students vary wildly in the way they use that day. The slackers pretend to work or work on homework they need to imminently finish for another class and may call it a "filler" day, while the better students put it to use for what it was intended for.

Everything the math teachers on this page have said is correct. Those of you who insist on contradicting them think you know everything about school because you attended one once. You're probably the type of people who also go see your doctor and demand tests and medication based on something you read on the internet.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you’ve ever spent time in a classroom, you’d see how much ‘filler’ time there is.

There is little to no filler time in my classroom.
And to PP who said their notes and recordings are posted for students to catch up on their own - I would love to have a class full of students who all are capable to learn material on their own. Sometimes this happens (lesson is easy enough and student is able to find time to complete practice tor missed lessons on top of current lessons) but most often this is not the case.
Obviously, life happens and students must miss a class every now and then. But there are consequences that I outlined in my original post above. Parents who take kids out of school for vacations (saying missing school is not a big deal) are robbing their kids of practice time with immediate feedback that teacher provides. They do it again and again. Then they don’t understand why their kid is struggling later in a year or two years down the road.

There is filler in EVERY class. Even my kid's AP math class has had filler time/days. Less than others, for sure. But it's still there.

AP math teacher and I call B.S. The timeline to teach all the concepts required for the AP Exam is so tight that there is no such thing as filler time in AP classes. Maybe students are given a review day before the test so that they are able to go over the last quiz that they just took in the unit , study in class and ask any questions they have, but that's not a filler day. My AP students vary wildly in the way they use that day. The slackers pretend to work or work on homework they need to imminently finish for another class and may call it a "filler" day, while the better students put it to use for what it was intended for.

Everything the math teachers on this page have said is correct. Those of you who insist on contradicting them think you know everything about school because you attended one once. You're probably the type of people who also go see your doctor and demand tests and medication based on something you read on the internet.

+1 another math teacher. To all the parents who think their kids can catch up easily after taking vacation during school year: the gaps will surface much later: think kids who drop calculus class in September because now you actually are supposed to know everything from the last five years of math and the teacher does not reteach old concepts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:+1, kids are absent every day. We need to keep moving forward with the curriculum and not hold up the class to catch one student up.

If only that were actually true and they didn't hold up classes just to catch up the kids who make no effort, or ESOL kids, or whatever excuse (valid or not)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:+1, kids are absent every day. We need to keep moving forward with the curriculum and not hold up the class to catch one student up.

If only that were actually true and they didn't hold up classes just to catch up the kids who make no effort, or ESOL kids, or whatever excuse (valid or not)

Are you a teacher? Do you do this? I have been teaching quite a long time and I can tell you we actually don’t hold up class for these students. We can’t turn a 3 week unit into an 6 week unit for ESOL or SPED kids. We do move on and any kids who don’t get it behind.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:+1, kids are absent every day. We need to keep moving forward with the curriculum and not hold up the class to catch one student up.

If only that were actually true and they didn't hold up classes just to catch up the kids who make no effort, or ESOL kids, or whatever excuse (valid or not)

Are you a teacher? Do you do this? I have been teaching quite a long time and I can tell you we actually don’t hold up class for these students. We can’t turn a 3 week unit into an 6 week unit for ESOL or SPED kids. We do move on and any kids who don’t get it behind.

That doesn’t sound very equitable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Because there seemed to be no urgency from FCPS when school was closed for an entire year.

This right here. Districts showed THEY did not care that children were not in school, and now they wonder why parents picked up on that attitude? Come on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Schools no longer do anything about taedies and absences and the kids know it

Schools are actually doing “things” about tardies and absences. We have protocols that the Virginia code requires us to do. But when we do do those things, parents then complain that we are “hassling” them for attendance that they don’t care about, thus not doing anything to help improve their child’s attendance. And THAT is what the kids know. “My parent(s) don’t care about my attendance so why should I.”

Stop blaming the schools for poor attendance. This isn’t a school issue, it’s a parenting issue. Ohhh wait… parents don’t understand they are the problem and lovveeeee to blame public schools. (Just look at all of these discussion boards). This is a vicious cycle that will never end because parents “these days” think public school is a joke, love to talk about how much they love teachers during teacher appreciation week, but actually love to talk shit about teachers and think they are better than teachers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yet all of you send your kids to public school and complain about it….

That boggles my mind. You are very wealthy people yet you cheap out on your kid’s education. Why?

Not everyone is wealthy enough for private school to not be a significant cost

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Schools no longer do anything about taedies and absences and the kids know it

Schools are actually doing “things” about tardies and absences. We have protocols that the Virginia code requires us to do. But when we do do those things, parents then complain that we are “hassling” them for attendance that they don’t care about, thus not doing anything to help improve their child’s attendance. And THAT is what the kids know. “My parent(s) don’t care about my attendance so why should I.”

Stop blaming the schools for poor attendance. This isn’t a school issue, it’s a parenting issue. Ohhh wait… parents don’t understand they are the problem and lovveeeee to blame public schools. (Just look at all of these discussion boards). This is a vicious cycle that will never end because parents “these days” think public school is a joke, love to talk about how much they love teachers during teacher appreciation week, but actually love to talk shit about teachers and think they are better than teachers.

You know, the few parents who do try to appreciate teachers get really turned off by being told all of us are the problem.

Or would you like your room parents and PTA moms to up and disappear on you?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:+1, kids are absent every day. We need to keep moving forward with the curriculum and not hold up the class to catch one student up.

If only that were actually true and they didn't hold up classes just to catch up the kids who make no effort, or ESOL kids, or whatever excuse (valid or not)

Are you a teacher? Do you do this? I have been teaching quite a long time and I can tell you we actually don’t hold up class for these students. We can’t turn a 3 week unit into an 6 week unit for ESOL or SPED kids. We do move on and any kids who don’t get it behind.

That doesn’t sound very equitable.

So? School isn’t equitable contrary to what DCUM complains about. We are told to move on, so we do. Lots of material to cover!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Schools no longer do anything about taedies and absences and the kids know it

Schools are actually doing “things” about tardies and absences. We have protocols that the Virginia code requires us to do. But when we do do those things, parents then complain that we are “hassling” them for attendance that they don’t care about, thus not doing anything to help improve their child’s attendance. And THAT is what the kids know. “My parent(s) don’t care about my attendance so why should I.”

Stop blaming the schools for poor attendance. This isn’t a school issue, it’s a parenting issue. Ohhh wait… parents don’t understand they are the problem and lovveeeee to blame public schools. (Just look at all of these discussion boards). This is a vicious cycle that will never end because parents “these days” think public school is a joke, love to talk about how much they love teachers during teacher appreciation week, but actually love to talk shit about teachers and think they are better than teachers.

You know, the few parents who do try to appreciate teachers get really turned off by being told all of us are the problem.

Or would you like your room parents and PTA moms to up and disappear on you?

Room parents? The majority of classrooms post-Covid don’t use these anymore, unless you’re at a high SES school.

PTA moms? No real impact there. At quite a few Title I schools, meeting are attended by fewer than 10 families. So we’d never notice if a few dropped out.