Attendance seems to be slipping. Tony, Liz, Keira, and Joy are working hard. It is for them to judge if their heroic efforts are worth it, but to me, instructional time and attitudes are changing for the worse.
First, detentions for tardy at the start of the day is pointless and/or damaging. It never works. I'd like to stop recording ClassXP TDY for students unless they are 20 minutes late or more in first period. The switch-up approaches that Liz used last year worked better.
Second, as part of our student contracts, we must make it the responsibility of the student to clear absences. Phone calls to home cannot clear - only written notes will work. We need to reach student homes quickly when absent, but not allow voices to justify the absence because they frequently lie and because we really need four unexcused absences to give us flexibility in future student placement.
Many of our students fit the Access profile sadly. We are trying to keep them in our schools and most will stay, but students who we cannot help, must be allowed to move on without financial consequences to us. Keeping a young adult who doesn't want to be in normal classrooms and disrupts those rooms after we've done our best hurts everyone. We don't want to move our problems back into conventional classrooms. It hurts all students.
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