Blah blah blawgh

My kids did school registration over the last couple of days.  My son got a planner from the school.  This is PAGE 2 of the planner.

Habitually truant is defined by BVSD on page 4 of the planner as “four unexcused absences from school or from class in any one month or ten unexcused absences from school or class during any school year.”   The definition between what an excused or unexcused absence seems to be a bit grayer but on page 5 of the planner it states “parents must notify the attendance office at least 3 days in advance for absences involving family trips to obtain approval from the administration for an excused absence.”  This allows some discretion by administration.  Side note -  if you are more than 5 minutes late to a class, it counts as a full on unexcused absence.

I have business travel coming up to Europe and for the first time, it looks like we might be able to swing a whole family trip over there (we pick up the family trip cost, but my business part is picked up by the business).  They have never done that because it has always come at an odd time: right at the start of school, or in the midst of finals or something. This time, It would mean a week out of school somewhere in October.  We don’t take that lightly, particularly with our daughter as she has a pretty aggressive course load.  We have already discussed with her what it would mean, and asked her to present tactics to manage that.  But in any case,  I guess I am supposed to seek approval for this trip to be an excused absence because if it is not, my tail might just end up in court.  There is a part of me that is almost wanting to see that happen.

I tend to rant on this subject a bit because our daughter got hit with one of the truancy nasty grams a few years ago.  We pulled her out of lunch to buzz her over a piano lesson one day a week.  It meant that she got back to gym class (yes, right after lunch) about 10 minutes late.  Unexcused absence.  As she was late, the gym teacher would not let her dress out (which our kid was fine with as she would just do homework then) to do whatever the others were doing.  The absences accrued and we got the “habitually truant” warning letter. 

We challenged it with that school’s administration, and they (wisely) decided not to take any further action but we did get a tongue lashing about how school is the best place for these kids and how we could go to court etc.  I was sort of hoping it did there as well as I was going to bring a piano to it.   And a report card full of A’s.  I dreamed up getting video of the life changing phys ed class we were forcing her to miss, but that was just really getting #GOM like on a run. 

We’ll see if this first world problem fans out at all.