TERRACE HEIGHTS ATTENDANCE POLICY

Dear Parents:

If your child is going to be absent on a particular day (or days), please phone the school’s attendance number at 573-7824 between 7:00 a.m. and 9:30 a.m. letting us know the reason for your child’s absence. If we have not heard from you prior to that time, we will then have attendance personnel call you at home or at work to verify the absence. Once we have made voice contact with you, a written note will not be required. In the event that we have not made contact with you prior to your child’s return to school, please send a written note when he/she returns.

We are doing this program for two reasons. This system should cut down on paper work and time spent tracking down missing notes as well as sending reminders to collect notes. It will save you the time now spent calling and following up with notes, or writing duplicate notes, when the first note got lost in transit (as that sometimes happens). Second, you will know sooner, if for some reason you were unaware that your child was absent. Please help us to make this system work smoothly by remembering to call the school attendance line at 573-7824 before 9:30 a.m. if your child will be absent.

The school will contact the home by phone or letter if there is one unexcused absence. If there are 2 unexcused absences within a month, then a parent conference will be held.

The following are valid excuses for, according to School Policy #3122, absences and tardiness. Missed work assignments and activities may be made up in the manner provided by the teacher.

1. Participation in school-sponsored and approved activity. To be excused, a staff member must authorize this absence and the affected teacher must be notified prior to the absence unless it is clearly impossible to do so.

2. Absence caused by illness, health condition or family emergency. If phone contact has not been made, the parent is required to send a signed note of explanation with the student upon his/her return to school. A student shall be allowed one makeup day for each day of absence.

3. Absence for parental-approved activities. This category of absence shall be counted as excused for purposes agreed upon by the principal and the parent. An absence may not be approved if it causes a serious adverse effect on the student’s educational progress. In participation-type classes (e.g. certain music and physical education classes) the student may not be able to achieve the objectives of the unit of instruction as a result of the absence from class. In such a case, a parent-approved absence would have an adverse effect on the student’s educational progress, which would ultimately be reflected in the grade for such a course.

Thank you in advance for helping us make this attendance policy work.