Friday, March 29, 2024

Cascade School District adjusts to new guidelines on excused/unexcused absences

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Cascade School Superintendent Bill Motsenbocker said the state has come out with more definitions on excused/unexcused absences. Some of the recommendations were already implemented by the district, 

As far as the excused absences, it can be authorized by a staff member when affected teachers are notified prior to absence when possible. This deals with a school approved activity or an instructional program that is outside of the school day or in a different location. Those would be approved. 

“Any absence that deals with health condition, medical appointment, family emergency, religious purposes, court, judicial proceedings, jury duty, post secondary school apprenticeship program, visitation, scholarship interviews, search and rescue operation and issues directly related to their homeless status. Anything like that would be automatically approved,” Motsenbocker said, at the Aug. 21 Cascade School Board meeting. 

About 75 percent of those are all new, Motsenbocker said. Parents and guardians are expected to notify the school the morning of the absence, by phone, email or written note to provide an excuse for those absences. If no excuse is provided, the student needs to come to office when they return to school. 

Students 18 or over or emancipated by court action can provide a note for themselves. Students 14 years or older can submit notes for medical testing that shall remain confidential. Students 13 years or older may do the same for mental health, drug or alcohol treatment. 

“All students have this right for family planning and abortion. That is a state law. They can submit their own excuses. They are confidential and remain that way,” Motsenbocker said. “I actually looked at the law. Some of the things we get from WSDA (Washington School Directors Association) are recommendations. That raised my eyebrows, so I looked at that one.”

Absences can be approved for parent activities, but approval can be denied if it has serious affects to the student’s educational progress. 

“If a parent said I want to take my kid out of school for 10 weeks, and there were credits needed to graduate, the principal would probably not approve that. Parents have the right to do what they want to do but they need to know there are some pretty serious consequences,” Motsenbocker said. 

An elementary student with five or more unexcused absences in a single month or 10 or more in a single year will have a conference scheduled with the parent and student at a reasonably convenient time. That is something new in the law, he said. The conference will be used to identify barriers to the student’s regular attendance. 

“There are times, when we have middle school students especially when they have a younger sibling at home and there is no day care provided on those days. A lot of times they have their kid stay home with them. The purpose of that meeting may be to help that family find daycare,” he said. 

Unexcused absence is a student who has failed to attend the majority of hours or periods of the average school day or has failed to comply with the district policy on absences.

“In some schools, if you attend the majority of the class periods of the day, that is considered just fine. I’ve never worked in one of those districts. You have to be there every class period of every day. That is what is being expected. That is what we do here,” Motsenbocker said. 

The parent submits an excuse that does not meet the definition of an excused absence. That would be when an unexcused absence would occur, when they submit an excuse that doesn’t meet the definition or they fail to submit an excuse at all. 

“One of things we have to also, we have to make a phone call home or send an email home or we have to send a letter home anytime a child is not here. Our automatic dialing system does that,” he said. “Each unexcused absence will result in a letter or phone call to parents informing them of the consequences of additional unexcused absences. Reasonable efforts will be made to provide this in a language in which the parent is fluent.”

A student’s grade will not be affected if no graded activity occurs during the absence. After two unexcused absences within a month, a designated staff member will meet with the parent and apply a new program out there called the Washington Assessment of Risks and Needs of Students or WARNS. 

Where appropriate, apply research based interventions consistent with the WARNS program. If the parent does not attend, the staff member and student may hold a conference, however the parent must be notified of the steps being taken to reduce those absences. 

With transfer students, the extending districts will provide the receiving district together with a copy of the WARNS assessment and any interventions previously provided to the student and most recent truancy information for that student. 

“That is a new requirement. If a student transfer from us to Wenatchee and we’ve had some trouble with absences and truancy, then all that information and everything we’ve done has to sent with that packet to them,” Motsenbocker said. 

No later than a student’s fifth unexcused absence in a month, the district will enter into an agreement with the student and parent to improve attendance. Refer the student to a truancy board or juvenile court. Those are things the district already has to do, he said. 

“But the change is we have to develop a community truancy board that has to do with people in the community where our kids go to school. It could be anyone in our community. They haven’t come up with all the details,” Motsenbocker said. “I have been in contact with Chelan County Juvenile Court. They are going to help us develop our truancy board. We’ll be doing that shortly. We also have to have a memorandum of understanding with the court.” 

If the district does a petition to juvenile court, a statement the student has had unexcused absences in the school year has to be made and actions taken by the district have not be substantially successful to reduce the absences, he said. 

All sanctions for failure to attend school will be in compliance with the state and district regulations requiring the policy and corrective action. 

“It looks like they have given more freedom for excused absences. Giving district more latitude in excused absences. But they’ve asked us to follow up more closely if there’s one or two unexcused absences,” said Board President Carrie Sorensen. 

Board member Brenda Biebesheimer asked how the district would tell the parents. She didn’t believe the parents understood why they need to send a note. Motsenbocker said anytime your child is not in school, parents must send a note explaining why. 

“We may need to revise a tiny bit because we did this in June, but all the administrators shared the same attendance letters and put them into our handbooks. We have the same information in each of our school handbooks that all the kids receive,” said PD Principal Emily Ross. “It was before this was revised, but it’s close and it is online. That’s what we’re trying.”

All of the absences for her daughter last year, Sorensen said, she assumed were excused. 

“As a parent, this seems to be more logical in what parents are assuming. I’m finally, after figuring out the system, I would call and say I realize this is unexcused but this is where she is at and why,” Sorensen said. “There was nothing we could do about it. The way it is set up now is how most parents would assume is excused. The parents that do send notes with their kids. It’s the ones that don’t that are going to have the meetings and conferences.”

If your student oversleeps, even if you send a note, a lot of people still get truancy letter, Biebesheimer said. It is still unexcused, Sorensen said, even with a note. 

“It depends how many have stacked up. If it was just one in a month, you probably wouldn’t have a problem,” Motsenbocker said. 

Ian Dunn can be reached at 548-5286 or editor@leavenworthecho.com.

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