I took my children to Bring Your Child to Work Day. I figured a couple of days with unexcused absence during the year isn't a big deal.

I had a small number of my elementary students out on that day. I think it was about 5 or so between my morning and afternoon class.

We've had so many students out since winter break due to family trips (cruises, Disney, ski trips, etc) that it is becoming a running "joke". I'm not going to be concerned over a few missing last Thursday.

We told ours they could come during a day in the summer, a snow day or teacher workday if they really wanted to come to work. Sometimes co-workers bring children on snow days but never on bring your child to work day. FCPS already has them missing enough school with the added full and half days. They both have been during snow days already this year.

Anonymous wrote:I'm a teacher and wish Take your child to work day was a national day off school or a professional day for teachers. The kids who stay behind are always upset that their parents didn't take them. We should move it to mid-July IMHO.

Both those options would be problematic for parents. If parents don't work at a place where they can take their kids, now they have to find and pay for child care.
It is one day and I would be surprised to hear of a school were even close to 50% of the kids are out.

I am not sure if it was excused or not but I completely forgot to notify the school and somehow did not get one of those "your child was absent" robo calls so I am assuming it is excused,

I did tell the teacher weeks ahead b/c I wanted to make sure there was no testing on that day. DS is in first and there were tests the 2 weeks prior.

As far as the kids left behind, according to the parents in DS's class most stayed in school, a few went with their parents for a couple of hours. It seem my kid was the only one out all day. All this is to say it is not like only 1 or two kids are left behind.

I never understood why people get so uptight about excused vs. unexcused absences.

I'm a teacher and wish Take your child to work day was a national day off school or a professional day for teachers. The kids who stay behind are always upset that their parents didn't take them. We should move it to mid-July IMHO.

Does it matter?

Our ES has always excused my kids for this. In fact, they ask you to get the requests in a week in advance and not wait until the day of. But this is FCPS, so YMMV. Certainly, no one will is going to treat this as truancy-- especially since lots of parents are probably taking kids to programs scheduled by federal agencies.

Yes, it's an unexcused absence. See #3:
http://www.fcps.edu/dss/ips/ssaw/attendance/faqs.pdf

If it bothers you call and ask. But there is no consequence until your kid racks up quite a few unexcused absences. Parents take kids to Disney for a week as unexcused all the time. Take them next year. And the year after. It's a great program.

What do you mean "let it slide?" There's nothing to "do."

It's an unexcused absence. Your kid basically played hooky.

But, so what?

What did the school say when you called to ask about it?

They don't matter and next time say your kid is sick.

I have two kids (1st and 3rd grade), in different elementary schools in FCPS. I took them both to work for Take your Child to Work Day, and I thought that was educational type activity for them both and from previous experience about half of class is usually gone on that day. So now I see that while the 1st grader was marked as "excused" absence, for the 3rd grader it was marked as "unexcused" with the Take your child to work note... My question is: should I do something or let it slide? My DD loved it, so next year, when she is in 4th grade, do I not take her to work? Should I talk to the principal about it? Does unexcused absence in elementary school make any difference for anything?