Responding to concerns by some on Fort Leonard Wood about a new attendance policy at the Waynesville R-VI School District that denies credit to students for nine unexcused absences, Superintendent Judene Blackburn and Waynesville High School Principal Darrel Vaughan spoke Wednesday to leaders of post community organizations.
“Since (organizational leaders) said that really had been a topic of conversation in some circles, we thought it would be good to spend a little bit of time discussing in particular the high school attendance policy,” Blackburn said at Wednesday morning’s meeting of Woodworks, a monthly information-sharing session between leaders of on-post and off-post community organizations.
Vaughan said the policy is necessary to help keep students in school and attending classes.
“There is a little bit of bite to this; we didn’t have that bite before,” Vaughan said. “This is just something I can have to kind of hold over that student’s head to say, ‘You’re not going to receive credit if you don’t show up to school.’ It’s amazing what happens at the end of the year with seniors when they realize and come in and say, ‘Mr. Vaughan, I don’t want to go to summer school.’ Well, you should have thought of that before you missed 30 days.”
Some students don’t bother to show up for the first class of the day but still pass the classes because they studied on their own. Showing up late for school isn’t acceptable, Vaughan said, but there wasn’t an effective way to hold students accountable once they passed the eight-day maximum to require summer school attendance.
“One of the issues I’ve had with the attendance policy in the past, if you missed eight days you were required to attend summer school and that was basically the gist of the attendance policy,” Vaughan said. “You could miss 25 days and the most I do was to say, ‘You will go to summer school.’”
The policy contains a list of unacceptable excuses, including oversleeping, family vacations, going out of town, missing the bus, personal business, car trouble, dental or orthodontist appointments, doctor’s appointments, activity camps, temporary illness that does not require hospitalization or district/state contests and other school-related activities in which the student is not a participant.
Acceptable excuses, according to the policy, are hospitalization, deaths in the family, counselor and office appointments, up to two college visits per year for juniors and seniors, school-related activities in which the student is a participant and a history of chronic health problems, provided that the health problems are documented with the attendance office.
While students receive an automatic denial of class credit if they have nine unexcused class absences, Vaughan said there’s an appeal process in place and reasonable exceptions probably will be allowed.
“Those people that are concerned about this policy, I don’t think it’s an issue, because those people that are concerned are going to have their students in school,” Vaughan said. “We’re trying to help those students and those parents who really aren’t concerned about the policy and make them aware of what we need to do and have those students here.”
Beth Holsather from the Fort Leonard Wood Community Spouses Club asked what should happen when students have to miss school for illnesses that don’t require hospitalization.
“My daughter is a junior; I notice it says on here that doctors appointment were unexcused,” Holsather said. “So this year, do we still bring a note, do we not bring a note?”
Vaughan said the note will help.
“The more documentation they have, if they have to look at it, I can say, ‘Oh, this is a non-issue; they’ve been to the doctor and they’ve been here,’ and we’ll just move on,” Vaughan said.
Audience member Vicki Patridge asked how the eight-day policy will affect military families who must move in the middle of the school year.
“What is your policy if children are in the middle of a PCS move and they need to leave?” Patridge asked. “All the DOD schools I’ve ever come from, they let them get out up to a month early and still get credit for their classes as long as they’re passing.”
Both Vaughan and Blackburn said they’ll work with those situations.
“Toward the end of the year we have a lot of that. I have a lot of students leaving and it’s not been an issue that I know of from our district,” Vaughan said. “We know that’s going to happen here; we understand this is near a military base and that’s going happen all year long.”
Vaughan said the school district already accommodates military families who come from outside the area and don’t realize when classes begin.
“Our policy says if you come in and register after 10 or 15 days, we really don’t have to allow credit, but we understand and we’re going to work with all those parents who come in,” Vaughan said. “There’s a lot of schools that don’t start until after Labor Day, so we have a lot of military that we are expecting will come in Tuesday that haven’t been in school for the last 10 to 12 days. We’re going to work with that student and we’re not going to count that against them.”
Members of the 94th Engineer Battalion, currently deployed to Iraq, expect to return on a block leave sometime in January. Several audience members asked how the school district would handle that.
Blackburn said legislation passed this year by the Missouri legislature known as House Bill 1678, sponsored by Rep. David Day from Dixon, may help.
“Under (House Bill) 1678, we have some leeway now as to how we might handle that. And again, we don’t want to put a statement out there that says, ‘It’s fine, take them out of school.’ We don’t want to do that at all,” Blackburn said. “But we look at every situation and we will work with it and really can now, under 1678, work with the families the way we need to.”
Blackburn told those attending Woodworks that the school district must meet state laws that require student attendance in class and hold the district accountable for enforcing the attendance policy.
“To maintain accreditation status, we have to do a really good job in a lot of areas, including seeing that our students are where they need to be, which is in school. They can’t learn if they’re not here,” Blackburn said. “There’s a reason that (the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education) expects us to have good attendance and that’s because students need to be in school.”
Other procedures have also been implemented to make sure students are in school, Vaughan said. Those include a school messenger system that informs parents in mid-morning and in the evening if their students didn’t show up for school on time or missed any classes during the day.
“That was something we put in place to try to help out with attendance and make sure that you all were aware if the students weren’t there,” Vaughan said.
Blackburn said members of the appeals committee will be considerate of the special situations of military families.
“About 63 to 64 percent are military dependents; a total of 75 percent of those 5,300 students are connected to Fort Leonard Wood either as a military dependent or they have a parent who works on Fort Leonard Wood,” Blackburn said. “So we are we are very, very highly impacted by this military installation, and have been forever, and so we really understand transition kinds of issues and we really try to do everything that we can.”
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