Reply to Unexcused absences

Forum Index » Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS)

Reply to "Unexcused absences"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Not OP here, responding to both:

[quote=Anonymous]Chronic absenteeism is a huge problem post-pandemic.  Including the OP, who thinks it is NBD.... [/quote]

and...

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Chronic absenteeism is a huge problem post-pandemic.  Including the OP, who thinks it is NBD.

School districts in Virginia and around the country are trying to deal with it.  This is a good thing.  Even for UMC kids, missing a week of school is hard and can lead to lasting problems.  [/quote]

This is OP, and guilty as charged. The school year is longer than it needs to be, filled with a bunch of busy work, and a last month where they run out the clock. If the school year allowed for reasonable breaks long enough to take trips, we would use those instead of pulling the kids out of school. There is a big difference between a kid skipping a bunch of school enabled by parental ignorance or indifference, and a kid travelling with his family and keeping up on his work while he's out.[/quote]

I used to be cowed by all those lectures about chronic absenteeism. Then I saw exactly what OP saw, as did all the other UMC parents. Plus we saw how the [i]schools[/i] have no problem interrupting student education when it's convenient for them (the lack of 5 day weeks in the calendar), or [b]treating education like it's optional in other ways[/b]. It's really annoying to be lectured by people who don't themselves work their hardest to ensure our kids' time is well used when they are in school or that they have a consistent academic schedule.[/quote]

This. My son just came home and said they had a [KITCHY NAME WITH SCHOOL MASCOT] day because other kids in the same grade were on a field trip. On further inquiry, he explained that this means they just have the day to do any work that needs to be done (null set for him) and otherwise it is free time. He further explained that this is "basically what we do every Friday." (And this is AAP!) So, yes, missing even a day of school at the parent's discretion will call into question my child's future, but twiddling his thumbs for a day in his school chair is perfectly appropriate. Hard to reconcile the logic. Maybe there is some magic in that FCPS school chair.[/quote]

Kids exaggerate the truth all the time. Maybe it was a fun day because all the other kids in the grade went on a field trip, but it definitely does not happen every Friday.[/quote]

DP. In second grade my kid came home and would say they did nothing at school. I would quiz DC in detail about each subject block, and indeed what they did effectively worked out to nothing. When math was "Because Larlo behaved well we watched a YouTube video about how to draw cats, which is Larlo's favorite thing," and DC was done with the language arts work, and they were in between units in social studies and so on, it was effectively nothing. Sure the day was full, but not of academic content. And in third grade DC's teacher's first comment to me was, "I'm surprised at how behind DC is in math." I had to explain how many drawing-cats days there were in 2nd grade math. So not all kids are lying, exaggerating, or forgetting this stuff when they report it. The FCPS curriculum leaves too much space in many grades to really...not do much.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics