Absentee Students

Recently my district had an entire week off for Thanksgiving break. Nine days from Saturday before Thanksgiving until the Sunday after is no short weekend. This evolved from what was earlier a four day weekend when my kids were in school. Then the parents would complain they had to leave early to get to grandma's house. So the districts changed the vacation period to five days. Parent then assumed that "it's only two days" and took their kids out the entire week. So again district buckled and the entire week was given to them. But that wasn't enough. I had kids leaving the Wednesday prior to the week off and one student whose family stayed in Mexico on vacation until the week after the break. Whatever happened to requiring students to be in class?

Oh sure, we have a 90% attendance rate requirement in Texas, but instead of enforcing some rules, our administrators willingly give permission to miss up to six days for "college visits" (which many times take place on ski lifts...) and allow students to miss time for cruises, family trips, etc to the point that make up work is almost impossible. And who gets to take up the slack and endure abuse from parents? The teachers.

When I was in school excessive absences were shown to be negative influences on a student's progress. When I had chicken pox in first grade and had to miss two weeks, serious consideration was given to holding me back in spite of my grades. Now students are allowed to make up "seat time" by sitting in an empty room biding their moments to make up missing classes. In talking to many students, they admit that if the advantage of seat time wasn't available, they probably could have made it to class.

We are teaching these future employees a poor lesson about accountability, responsibility and maturity. This is being aided by parents who seem unwilling to pay attention to a calendar and made worse by competition seasons that sometimes require days out of class. In the Spring we can look forward to soccer, golf and tennis students missing one day a week for the three months they compete. That's 20% of their class time. And THAT time is forgiven. But once you add in band trips, AcDec trips. Latin Club, Spanish Club, college trips and more and soon students are prolonging and delaying every project and exam. It makes grading impossible. But it makes learning negligible-with a dismissive attitude toward the process and the idea that graduation can be bought via threats and manipulation.

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