Come to school and if you don’t, we will criminally charge you for coming to school.
The new attendance policy implemented many new aspects that will take serious action against chronic skippers; including filing a court mandated restraining order for after school trespassing on campus.
“If it gets to the point where they have to go to court, it means they really haven’t been coming to school for a while,” said sophomore CJ Lee, “And it’s a law that we have to go to school, so it makes sense that they would get the court involved.”
Students aren’t taken to court until multiple unexcused absences have occurred. On the first offense a call will be sent out to parents to let them know their child wasn’t in class. On the second offense policy, parents will still be notified but now so will the grade administrator. It’s not until the third absence where changes start to become apparent. On the third offense, students are suspended from after school activities, but they are offered the opportunity to do two days of community service to regain these privileges. As the offenses accumulate, the punishments escalate.
“It sucks for the seniors because at the end of the year they don’t care as much, and now they have to,” said senior Danielle Cossio, “I think it’s really extreme that they are going to make us do community service for three absences.”
For students who regularly attend class and are active within the school, the new policies may be shocking. Students uninvolved with after school activities may seem to skate by these new consequences, however they aren’t off the hook either.
“Sometimes kids have less of a connection with WS and these new changes will not be taking away anything from them,” said vice principal Becky Brandt,” for these kids we do much of the same as before with getting the parents involved and on our side. We also started the System of Support Advisor (SOSA) which involves Eldridge and a few others who try to build relationships with students and try to enable them to walk across the stage with the rest of their class when graduation comes around.”
The new attendance policy, along with SOSA, contains some parts that are disagreeable to students; however, its main goal is to help students succeed. Administration hopes that it will increase attendance and fix the chronic skipper upsurge.
“We get kids who no matter what the rules are, are going to break them,” said SOSA advisor Jason Eldridge, “but I think goal-oriented kids will benefit tremendously.”