When the administrators met with the student body for the handbook assembly, they introduced a new policy for attendance. This had left some students with questions and new thoughts. Students and faculty all share different opinions on the school’s new attendance policies in the handbook. 

Catherine Ortiz, 12, shared their opinion towards the policy. 

“I think it just depends on the kids and what their home life is like. I think the office should realize that some kids don’t have the chance to come to school on time everyday and some kids have to get a ride to school,” said Ortiz.

Not all students can be provided a way of transportation every single day throughout the school year. Now with this updated policy, students can be penalized for something out of their control. Not all students can be on time to school for many other reasons that could be personal. 

Aubrey Fuqua, 11, believes that the policy has only changed since their freshman year but does not agree that there was much of a change.

“I think it has changed quite a bit since the beginning of  my freshman year. I feel like everything has been locked down much more and a lot better as well as more secure,” said Fuqua.

Fuqua thinks that the school is starting to be more conscious of how students are doing in attendance but doesn’t believe that the policy is going to affect students that much.

“I don’t think it’s changed how things are around the school but I really do

think they want to make a change,” said Fuqua.

Kelly Heizman, administrator, spoke out about the attendance policy and the slight changes that were made about it. 

“Truly the policy really isn’t any different. In the handbook it is always excused and unexcused and kind of what the excused reasons are then everything else falls under unexcused. What we were seeing across the entire district was that we were having a number of attendance issues which were just people calling in for legitimate but kind of random reasons,” said Heizman.

These policies have changed to better the school and the students. Truancy had come up more over the past years which has caused a shift in the percentage of students attending the regular amount of school. 

“The state average from what I believe from what I heard was that we were avarging before covid about 10% in this state of that chronically absent and we were at about 50% this last year,” said Heizman.

The main reasoning behind policies gaining slight updates was to better students and the attendance. 

“We have the issue of truancy, so we get reports at the end of the school year that we have to give to the state regarding truancy numbers and a thing called chronically absent. So, if a student misses 20% of the school year, they would be considered chronically absent,” said Heizman.

Truancy was one of the biggest concerns from the state and encouraged for there to be a change made in the attendance. For more information on how attendance in high school has changed, be sure to check out the handbook located on the link below! 

https://www.usd230.org/domain/163