New attendance policy shakes things up

AISD’s new attendance policy is hitting many students and parents hard. Just ask  sophomore Bethany Raup. McCallum administrators communicated AISD’s new policy over winter break to parents through a letter.

Raup missed five A-Day class periods and all of her A-day class credits were revoked during the fall semester and her GPA dropped by 0.5.

“Last semester I was in check with the previous amount of days missed,” Raup said.

Based off of the old policy, Raup was within the credit range, having missed fewer than six classes.

“The amount of hours I should have to make up should only be four,” Raup said. “I have to make up 16 hours to receive credits for these classes.”

Like Raup, McCallum parent Anissa Ryland also learned of the new policy through principal Mike Garrison’s Dec. 16 letter.

Ryland was pretty upset about the new policy and wondered how it would affect  students.

“Changing documented illness to an unexcused absence seems to fly in the face of standard public health practices, as well as common sense,” Ryland said. “Penalizing a student for staying home when they are ill will encourage them to come to school when they are possibly contagious, exposing other students and teachers. This change seems to not only put students and faculty at increased risk, but has the very real potential to have a negative financial impact as well.”

Ryland went to district authorities to voice her opinion.

“I contacted vice principal Featherstone, and he let me know that this was a district-wide policy, so on Jan. 7, I sent an email to Superintendent Cruz,” Ryland said.

Ryland has tried to tweet Dr. Cruz on Twitter, and she posted on Facebook, asking other parents opinions about the policy.

“His assistant told me that she would get the letter to him,” Ryland said. “But I have not heard from anyone from the district. I looked up policies at other Texas districts and from the information provided on their websites and social media pages, it appears that other districts have interpreted the state policies with public health concerns in mind. Most of those I looked up still allowed for a reasonable number of parent-authorized, excused absences due to illness. I am simply looking for an answer on why we can’t do the same.”

Ryland is worried about how students will make up the days they missed.

“Whether it is their extracurricular commitments, a job, or transportation issues to Saturday school, I worry about the negative impact this may have on keeping children engaged and on track when they have been absent due to an illness,” Ryland said.

The school district requires that the hours you missed of school be made up through tutoring hours and make-up work. Raup missed school since she was sick and wishes to communicate to AISD that missing school isn’t always something a student can control.

“Being sick should be an excused even without a doctor’s note,” Raup said. “Many forms of sickness don’t necessarily call for a doctor.”

Excused absences, however, do not count against truancy. If a student misses school for the given amount of days for the semester, they will still have to do the make up hours.”