<p>I’ve always been a “If I can pull a B or A and not attend = awesome” person. It worked in hs, college and law school. It works as a lawyer. You go when you need to or must. You go if the work is hard or important. Not every little thing requires perfection. You leave when there are diminishing returns. Knowing your own limits and requirements and being comfortable with your own standards is key. </p>
<p>So yes, I would excuse my kid for a mental health/study day.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Me too.</p>
<p>I’m surprised that this subject is the cause of so much moral wrangling. As someone else mentioned upstream…it’s your kid. Assuming you are an involved and reasonable parent an occasional absence based on what the parent and the student consider to be valid criteria shouldn’t be such a BIG decision. An important part here is OCCASIONAL. </p>
<p>Neither of our kids every wanted to take a day off unless they were very ill. I have on occasion played the mommy card and ‘grounded’ them for a day for their own mental and physical well being.</p>
<p>Well how much is OK? Earlier I posted that my kid has missed too much school. 16 days this year. That is from 1 illness, receiving a award for volunteerism, going on a once in a lifetime trip that came up suddenly, mental health days (maybe 3), and participating in some out of town school trips. I don’t think we’ve done anything wrong but 16 seems like too many absences.</p>
<p>Out of town school trips should not be counted as absences. Neither should an illness with a doctor’s excuse.</p>
<p>Nine actual absences (no doctor’s note, non-school related absence) in one semester winds a student up before a review board here to see if they can get credit for the year.</p>
<p>I don’t think anything is held against my kid, and the absences are excused, but they are still on the transcript under DAYS ABSENT. At ten days you start receiving letters, but no one really cares about a high stat kid missing school for any reason. I don’t even open the mail! Our counselor a are really busy trying to help kids graduate here.</p>
<p>On report cards absences are listed as excused or unexcused, but they don’t make those clarifications on transcripts.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Depending on the school, teachers/admins, etc even within NYC…9 absences in a semester may result in anything from a call/mail home from the school to a visit from a truant officer.</p>
<p>We get a computer generated letter at 10 absences. I’ve never heard of anything more than that happening to anyone ( obviously I don’t know every person). If the school district has a real problem I think they encourage you to go to the alternative school. If there was a truant officer around here than that person would be earning every penny!</p>
<p>Cobrat is right, 9 absences in a semester can bring action here. Also, if a person of school age is found by the police on the streets during school hours he/she is rounded up and taken to a detention center where the parents/guardians are called and must come pick up the student. My D2, who is small and young looking was questioned a couple of times during college, and my D1 was rounded up when she was in private school on a different schedule and didn’t have her school ID with her.</p>
<p>When I was homeschooling, I wouldn’t let D1 play in the front yard during school hours just because I didn’t want to have the question raised.</p>
<p>I would have been able to answer easily (strict schedule, lesson plans, grade book, etc.), but why borrow trouble?</p>
<p>Also, I let my kids know: If you stay home from school, you are HOME BOUND. That means you don’t go to the beach, you don’t go to the corner store, you don’t go anywhere. If you’re not fit, too busy, too tired, etc. to go to school, then you’re equally unfit to be anywhere else. Stay home. Rest, study, rest, study, rest.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Well, for example, I took IB HL Chemistry in high school. To give you an idea of what it covered, I could help my new college friends with chemistry until after the midterm of organic chemistry, a class that is notoriously hard at basically every school. Every single student in this class was an IB Diploma candidate, which means they are testing in at least 6 subjects (or perhaps 5 if they already took one jr year, but many of those also take another IB class in place of the exam they took jr year). Most (all?) IB exams are over multiple days. So, there will literally be no kids in that IB Chemistry class for 2 weeks. Other IB subjects were more friendly to non Diploma candidates, like Comp Sci or History or English.</p>
<p>There were often two sessions of most IB classes. So, say 50 kids for an estimate. We had about 30 IB Diploma candidates, so each IB class was (on average) 60% IB Diploma candidates, which means these classes would be missing 60% of their students for 2 weeks, at minimum. Some, like Chemistry, would be missing everyone.</p>
<p>What can you do with 60% of the class? Especially, what can you do that is fair to the IB Diploma candidates? These are the top academic achievers in the school. They just spent 2 weeks taking very stressful exams. Is it fair for them to show up after the exams are over and have the teachers go “hey, here is all the work you missed the last 2 weeks… I know everything we were working toward for the last year in this class is finished, but I have some busy work for you.”</p>
<p>It does not mean that half the school is taking all these exams; it means that the kids that ARE taking all these exams often find themselves in the same classes. Obviously the classes where most of the kids are not taking exams keep working. If you only took 1 IB exam, then you definitely missed work when you were out for the exam and had to make it up.</p>
<p>I hope that helps explain.</p>
<p>My IB classes also had final “projects” which varied in time requirement, mostly to keep us busy during the month of school after IB exams.</p>
<p>I was on a September-June schedule and none of our classes just blew off the last month. We did a very large cultural project in AP Spanish, continuing calc and stats topics in those classes, a 30 page analysis paper in AP English, etc. </p>
<p>I definitely took days off to do AP studying. Our tests were off site so the whole day was excused for us anyway. I would generally take those days to cram for the next test. I would generally take a day or so off before them- especially when I was taking 5 or so at a time. During AP test time the teachers expected many in the upper-level classes to miss a few days anyway so the weeks were light.</p>
<p>Sophomore and junior year, my parents would just call and say I wouldn’t be there. Senior year, I called myself in. I had a large-ish number of excused absences due to medical issues and another day really wasn’t to kill me. I was used to needing to teach myself material because of this.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The missing classes to take AP exams wasn’t that much of a factor at my HS or similar ones in my area. Since most of my classmates were taking AP courses because their academic level was already advanced that those were the lowest level courses they could take, my HS had a nearly seamless system so possibilities if AP exams conflicting with AP exams are minimized. </p>
<p>This was more of an issue with classmates on the non-AP track who self-studied for a few weeks and registered to take the AP without taking the associated AP course. In such cases, they are always excused in practice. Wasn’t a big deal as the level of the non-AP students was such that getting 4-5s with a few weeks of self-studying and reviewing notes from the non-AP course equivalent was common.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Because so many K-12 students in NYC have issues with truancy without parental knowledge, students calling themselves in wouldn’t be accepted as doing so violated school regulations of every public school I attended. Unless one was good at imitating an “adult” voice, parents had to make those calls or at least, write a note for the student to take to the teachers/admins to explain the absence. </p>
<p>Yes, the latter system’s not perfect as I knew a few classmates who wrote their notes and signed stuff on behalf of their parents from the beginning so the schools assumed the “parental signature” was that of their parents…not the kid signing everything on his/her parents’ behalf.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Ok a few things. One, I wasn’t in the NYC school district so I really don’t care how they run. It was irrelevant to my life and situation. I really don’t understand why everything has to go back to the NYC schools. Two, it is permissible once you’re 18 (I think there might’ve been a waiver or something that needed signing) to sign yourself out from my district. No need to imitate anything. </p>
<p>Also, notes weren’t accepted in my district- had to be called in.</p>
<p>Strategic absences ~ yes. I would call the school, and I would lie. Headache is the least complicated malady. I didn’t think our school system gave us much choice. Sometimes they needed to finish a paper. Sometimes a surprise assignment would have sunk their grade. Make-up tests were usually harder, so rarely worth it. Their attendance history was good. They otherwise, never skipped school. They are finishing college now. I have no regrets ~ would make the same decision.</p>
<p>romanigypsyeyes@114,</p>
<p>I posted that to point out not every school district allowed students to call themselves in. Seems like your school district was willing to place more trust in students than the NYC DOE.</p>