Editor,
Maddie Shoop-Gardner’s well-written and informative Student News column, “High school attendance policies fail nonschool athletes” highlights that the Sequoia Union High School District’s attendance policy penalizes students who miss school because of a nonschool sponsored commitment and/or competition. For horseback riding events, Maddie and her parents have two options: Tell the truth or call in sick.
Shoop-Gardner points out that Palo Alto High School has a flexible attendance model that allows excused absences for “special circumstances,” explicitly including non-Paly competitions such as sports, fine arts, debate and other academic competitions. Paly’s policy recognizes legitimate commitments. While this would give students an excused rather than an unexcused absence, the absence still affects the Average Daily Attendance that determines district funding. Analysis and evaluation of the two issues, encouraging student attendance and district funding, should be separate. California is one of six states that bases funding on ADA. As a retired teacher, after 50 years in the classroom, a student’s absence adds rather than detracts from my workload. Senate Bill 98, which was to make the change, faltered and morphed into instruction to the Legislative Analyst’s Office to study the effects of changing to an enrollment-based system. Let California catch up with the rest of the country in changing to an enrollment based system rather than ADA. It will benefit both teachers and students. Why is California one of six states who uses the ADA rather than enrollment for financial support?
Peggy Brady
Foster City
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(1) comment
Because Peggy - enrollment is a static number. Once posted, student truancy and inevitable population changes would simply fund a school regardless of attendance. Lovely for the administration, not so good for the tax payers.
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