Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Start by demanding that family vacations are not excused regardless of the socioeconomic status of the family. Write letters to the BOE and Smith on this issue specifically. Ask why a week at Disney is an educational experience, but attending the funeral of a cousin is an excused absence.

Stop deflecting. Neither a funeral or a week at Disney would add up to 47 unexcused absences.

47 days is 9 weeks. 9 weeks. Who goes on vacation or goes to a funeral for 9 weeks?

Not straight, but I have a student who has tacked 2-3 days onto every 3 day weekend or holiday so far this year. She is sick, of course. The family goes somewhere sunny.

And who gives a crap? You are jealous. I'm a parent who doesn't pull my kids for vacations and I have volunteered a lot at the schools through the decades. I hear the most bitching about this type of stuff from the poorer teachers who can't afford the vacations. There is so much resentment of the families with money from these teachers. My kid got a $100 watch for Christmas one year and so many teachers commented on it that he stopped wearing it. One of the teachers made a "must be nice" comment in his iep meeting. Jealousy. Get over it.

Anonymous wrote:Wasn’t the 40% number the number that had over 10 absences? I don’t know if that was the whole year or per semester, but 10 days over the course of a year could easily be a vacation, a few mental health days, and not bothering to send in notes for a couple absences that should be excused. It’s not that hard to get up to 10-12. It’s hard to get to 47 without a major health/mental health/job issue I would think.

Anonymous wrote:People this is not about taking a vacation. This one has nothing to do with wealthy kids.

This is a school system completely dropping the ball and giving out fake diplomas. The kids that skipped half the semester in Chemistry did not make up all the labs or pass the exam. The student who skipped 47 English classes or 50 Algebra classes was not making it up on their own by reading at the library or doing Khan academy.

It is the combined problem of ignoring truancy AND making teachers give fraudulent grades.

40% of Einstein students had excessive unexcused absences. This is not a one off situation but a systemic failure of the school system. Don't let them ignore it or deflect away from the problem.

Anonymous wrote:People this is not about taking a vacation. This one has nothing to do with wealthy kids.

This is a school system completely dropping the ball and giving out fake diplomas. The kids that skipped half the semester in Chemistry did not make up all the labs or pass the exam. The student who skipped 47 English classes or 50 Algebra classes was not making it up on their own by reading at the library or doing Khan academy.

It is the combined problem of ignoring truancy AND making teachers give fraudulent grades.

40% of Einstein students had excessive unexcused absences. This is not a one off situation but a systemic failure of the school system. Don't let them ignore it or deflect away from the problem.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Start by demanding that family vacations are not excused regardless of the socioeconomic status of the family. Write letters to the BOE and Smith on this issue specifically. Ask why a week at Disney is an educational experience, but attending the funeral of a cousin is an excused absence.

Stop deflecting. Neither a funeral or a week at Disney would add up to 47 unexcused absences.

47 days is 9 weeks. 9 weeks. Who goes on vacation or goes to a funeral for 9 weeks?

Not straight, but I have a student who has tacked 2-3 days onto every 3 day weekend or holiday so far this year. She is sick, of course. The family goes somewhere sunny.

Anonymous wrote:We constantly get the emails from my kids middle school saying she had an unexcued absence. I used to call about them but the school never could tell me the reason why and when I asked my kid (who is a pretty good student, and I don’t think ditching class) she either didn’t know or thought it was because the sub didn’t mark correctly; she was late to class because she needed to go to the bathroom; or she had left class (with a note) to do a checkin with counselor or something like that. I have given up trying to track it because the front office was so unhelpful and it didn’t seem like a big deal. It would be moderately more helpful if the automated message reported which period(s) the child was marked absent—then a parent could tell whether the kid or ditching class regularly, or whether there’s just a teacher or sub that doesn’t take attendance well. I can’t email all seven teachers every time I get the auto email.

Anonymous wrote:No child is served by a school system that does not care if it is challenging those students who are ready for the rigor or teaching those who need a basic education. No matter what the income level of the family of the student. Attendance should have value.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Start by demanding that family vacations are not excused regardless of the socioeconomic status of the family. Write letters to the BOE and Smith on this issue specifically. Ask why a week at Disney is an educational experience, but attending the funeral of a cousin is an excused absence.


Stop deflecting. Neither a funeral or a week at Disney would add up to 47 unexcused absences.

47 days is 9 weeks. 9 weeks. Who goes on vacation or goes to a funeral for 9 weeks?


47 unexcused absences is 47 classes. My kid's high school has 7 classes per day. So 7 days of school. Not 9 weeks of school.

The article HEADLINE is missing 47 DAYS OF ENGLISH. This is 9 weeks of a core class. Do you really think that these kids are hustling it in for math on those days? No.

This isn't about trips and it isn't happening at wealthy schools. It isn't a front office staff typing something in incorrectly. Einstein is failing large numbers of kids and hiding it to keep their numbers up.

The heck it's not. It is just students and parents at wealthy schools (and UMC students in general) know how to play the game and write excused notes all the time. I have kids that are routinely absent one or two days per week the entire year. (That'll add up to more than 40.) Strangely, they seem to fall on days of big quizzes and tests. Or there are the students who are doing to many activities and routinely take a day or two off every couple of weeks to catch up. And there are the kids who feel a little stressed out by school and find that they can get their friends to tell them what happened in class and do enough self-studying while they are home to keep up. The biggest problem I have with the Washington Post article is that it misses the actual scope of the problem by not including excused absences, and ignores the data that came out with the Maryland school report cards that shows the extent of chronic absences (which only includes full days).

Our current system of high school and awarding high school diplomas was based on a model of school attendance to gain access to information that could not readily be obtained elsewhere from last century. Ever since the internet and the readily available information on everything, the actual need to go to school to learn has been reduced. I can't believe one of our own board members said "It seems incongruous that you could pass high school math and not be there". Clearly she has never heard about Khan Academy.

We are really at the point where we need different types of diplomas that match the learning needs and desires of students. Some need a more traditional approach for a college ready educational experience. Some would do better with a self paced, online, demonstration of mastery process. And some would do best with a minimal, just meeting the graduation requirements diploma (22.5 credits only, thank you). Getting hung up on attendance accounting right now is missing the bigger, overall problem.

There’s a lot of truth in that post. I’m an educator and actually don’t have a problem with kids occasionally taking a mental health day or a day to catch up. They’re people, just like us. But I agree that it’s the UMC families who know how to work the system.