Anonymous wrote:I’m confused because my kids teachers are all already applying these rules across the board. Are these not currently the rules?

This is the current grading & reporting regulation: https://ww2.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/policy/pdf/master%20ika-ra.pdf

The changes being discussed are about the regulation that is currently proposed and is up for public comment: https://drive.google.com/file/d/19cDQr7J7LodmaYl2hkqHTFsrtbGxBML4/view

I’m confused because my kids teachers are all already applying these rules across the board. Are these not currently the rules?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Plenty of parents are picking kids up without signing the kid out. The kid just walks out of the building. Or the kid is just leaving the building when they feel like it. These are unexcused absences and should be marked as skipping.

This is what we do. They've made it annoying to sign out and sign back in and there are no consequences for absences. My kid leaves and returns at the change of periods using doors going to the portables and it's easy peasy. I don't need to find a parking place, go in, wait for them to phone the teacher, etc. And my kid is afraid of the attendance secretary who is "always mean."

That said, I'd be very happy if they added consequences and would do my part if the school took it seriously. But they don't, so I don't.

I have kids at two different high schools and neither requires the parent to park, come in and wait. The schools do have different procedures from each other, though, so it’s definitely school specific.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid in MS told me some kids skip class. I was immediately like, “where do they go?” There’s not really anywhere to go. My kid - they go and sit in their friends’ classes that have a sub. “When we have a sub there are always extra kids in our class.” Maybe HS subs take attendance better than MS subs or maybe they’re only looking to see if the kids who are on the list are present and not checking if they have extra

A trick the kids like to do is identify which students are ACTUALLY absent and then take their place. If a sub is not looking at the photos in Synergy while taking attendance it's very easy to do this.

I can't believe they are skipping school by attending school. So dumb.

There are students in my school who have been at school every single day but have attended zero actual classes. They are in the hallway or bathroom for 7 hours every day.

The crazy thing is they will still graduate on time thanks to Edmentum.

Anonymous wrote:Plenty of parents are picking kids up without signing the kid out. The kid just walks out of the building. Or the kid is just leaving the building when they feel like it. These are unexcused absences and should be marked as skipping.

This is what we do. They've made it annoying to sign out and sign back in and there are no consequences for absences. My kid leaves and returns at the change of periods using doors going to the portables and it's easy peasy. I don't need to find a parking place, go in, wait for them to phone the teacher, etc. And my kid is afraid of the attendance secretary who is "always mean."

That said, I'd be very happy if they added consequences and would do my part if the school took it seriously. But they don't, so I don't.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid in MS told me some kids skip class. I was immediately like, “where do they go?” There’s not really anywhere to go. My kid - they go and sit in their friends’ classes that have a sub. “When we have a sub there are always extra kids in our class.” Maybe HS subs take attendance better than MS subs or maybe they’re only looking to see if the kids who are on the list are present and not checking if they have extra

A trick the kids like to do is identify which students are ACTUALLY absent and then take their place. If a sub is not looking at the photos in Synergy while taking attendance it's very easy to do this.

I can't believe they are skipping school by attending school. So dumb.

There are students in my school who have been at school every single day but have attended zero actual classes. They are in the hallway or bathroom for 7 hours every day.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid in MS told me some kids skip class. I was immediately like, “where do they go?” There’s not really anywhere to go. My kid - they go and sit in their friends’ classes that have a sub. “When we have a sub there are always extra kids in our class.” Maybe HS subs take attendance better than MS subs or maybe they’re only looking to see if the kids who are on the list are present and not checking if they have extra

A trick the kids like to do is identify which students are ACTUALLY absent and then take their place. If a sub is not looking at the photos in Synergy while taking attendance it's very easy to do this.

I can't believe they are skipping school by attending school. So dumb.

I have seen this myself. Some teachers are often out. The kids know which ones and will show up to hang out with their friends. There are certain classes I won't cover for because I know random students will try to be there.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid in MS told me some kids skip class. I was immediately like, “where do they go?” There’s not really anywhere to go. My kid - they go and sit in their friends’ classes that have a sub. “When we have a sub there are always extra kids in our class.” Maybe HS subs take attendance better than MS subs or maybe they’re only looking to see if the kids who are on the list are present and not checking if they have extra

A trick the kids like to do is identify which students are ACTUALLY absent and then take their place. If a sub is not looking at the photos in Synergy while taking attendance it's very easy to do this.

I can't believe they are skipping school by attending school. So dumb.

Anonymous wrote:My kid in MS told me some kids skip class. I was immediately like, “where do they go?” There’s not really anywhere to go. My kid - they go and sit in their friends’ classes that have a sub. “When we have a sub there are always extra kids in our class.” Maybe HS subs take attendance better than MS subs or maybe they’re only looking to see if the kids who are on the list are present and not checking if they have extra

A trick the kids like to do is identify which students are ACTUALLY absent and then take their place. If a sub is not looking at the photos in Synergy while taking attendance it's very easy to do this.

My kid in MS told me some kids skip class. I was immediately like, “where do they go?” There’s not really anywhere to go. My kid - they go and sit in their friends’ classes that have a sub. “When we have a sub there are always extra kids in our class.” Maybe HS subs take attendance better than MS subs or maybe they’re only looking to see if the kids who are on the list are present and not checking if they have extra

Plenty of parents are picking kids up without signing the kid out. The kid just walks out of the building. Or the kid is just leaving the building when they feel like it. These are unexcused absences and should be marked as skipping.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have many students who get randomly pulled out of school for a week to 3 weeks to visit their home country. I assume parents don’t go during winter break because tickets are expensive. Instead they will pull the kids in Feb or March. It is a real pain because kids miss a lot of stuff. These are unexcused absences. Any idea how these will be dealt with?

Technically once they hit 10 days, the school is supposed to unenroll them and they are required to re-enroll to return to school. I had that happen to several of my students this year. Sometimes the parents just don't re-enroll them though

That’s interesting. Our school only applies the 10 day rule sporadically. They seem to monitor attendance more closely in the first couple of months to disenroll no-shows but then they seem to move on to other things

Anonymous wrote:We have many students who get randomly pulled out of school for a week to 3 weeks to visit their home country. I assume parents don’t go during winter break because tickets are expensive. Instead they will pull the kids in Feb or March. It is a real pain because kids miss a lot of stuff. These are unexcused absences. Any idea how these will be dealt with?

Technically once they hit 10 days, the school is supposed to unenroll them and they are required to re-enroll to return to school. I had that happen to several of my students this year. Sometimes the parents just don't re-enroll them though

We have many students who get randomly pulled out of school for a week to 3 weeks to visit their home country. I assume parents don’t go during winter break because tickets are expensive. Instead they will pull the kids in Feb or March. It is a real pain because kids miss a lot of stuff. These are unexcused absences. Any idea how these will be dealt with?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Attendance: Absences from skipping class disqualify for make-up work.

How on earth does MCPS plan on identifying, assessing and discerning which absences are legitimately due to skipping and not errors on their part due to subs not knowing how to take attendance, teachers forgetting to do attendance, or tardies being mistakenly marked as absences?

There's no way they have the scale and manpower to do this.

It’s actually pretty easy to identify. Either we mark them as unexcused absent or the system already shows the absence as “excused.” If the absence isn’t planned, parents can submit a note if the child was really sick or another legitimate reason identified by the student handbook to the attendance office. The teachers can then see it’s excused, and voila, the kid can make up the work.

This was actually policy and it DID work for many years until we got too soft with COVID.

I bet this PP is just a 17 year old who’s pissed they can’t skip to get McDonalds anymore.

You did not address the staff errors. I’m not a kid and I have firsthand experience with subs not knowing how to take attendance and marking my kid absent, or teachers making a mistake. I know it was a mistake because when I emailed teachers to inquire about the absences they would apologize and correct it.

I didn’t address the staff errors because that is an anomaly. Could it happen? Sure. But most of the time, we assign work, and I can check to see if your kid did it (or part of it). If it’s a true error, or we don’t want to deal with a parent’s complaining, we just change it. Normally, major All Tasks aren’t given with a sub, so the work given would have little to no impact on their grade if there was an error.

To address another PP with an actual valid claim, we can tell if they are skipping if it is either 1) unexcused or 2) they were marked present for some classes and not ours. If they are absent all day or leave for part of the day for an appointment, that must get excused.

I think people on this thread forget that most of these kids are still minors. Parents have the responsibility to let the school know if the kid is out for a valid reason.

And for the people on here saying it’s inequitable… the parents who are lazy or just willfully don’t want to learn need to step up. That’s actually your job as a parent. And if it’s language related, that’s also a moot point as most school personnel are bilingual and we have translation services.

For kids who skip to work a job, those students need to be tracked to a different program (internship, GED, etc).

We have to stop letting our students fail, cheat their way through credit recovery, and expect them, at the same time, to leave with an actual education that prepares them for college or a career