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Post by charliesmom05 on Jan 2, 2012 19:07:28 GMT -6
**UPDATE 2** 3/5/12
I went to the school this morning and was told that the social services lady wouldn't be in until tomorrow; I got a little upset bc the letter I received Saturday said I needed notes ON the day my son returned or else....
So then I was able to speak with the principal, who is super happy and nice. She immediately said no problem, don't worry about it, they are required to send out the letters and it's mostly for the parents who don't keep the school informed. There's no chance of ds being held back, no jail time, no fines. All is good.
I'm relieved but a little disturbed. If these letters are intended mostly for parents who don't keep the schools informed, why don't the schools do a little research to find out I did keep the school informed every time? oh well, this weekend was a stressful one for no reason.
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***UPDATE*** 3/4/12
I am a little frustrated. My ds was out of school Thursday and Friday for parent teach conference, and my slot to meet with the ds'steacher was Thursday. So this could have and IMO should have been brought to me then. Instead, I received a letter in the mail on Saturday stating my child has 4 unexcused absences and 8 excused. Just to fill you in, ds had a fever for two days and the school policy says to keep your child home if your child has a fever within 24 hours.... ds had an appointment with a respiratory specialist, took me 6- weeks to get it and I could only get ds in during school hours.... 5 days was to visit dh's family in Texas, 5 days was to visit my family on the east coast; thankfully we did bc ds's grandfather died 10 days later and it had already been 7 months since seeing him.
Each and every time ds was going to miss school, other than the two sick days, I had given plenty of notice and both days he was sick I called and let the school know...
The letter I received says, "once your child has 10 absences we require your child to have a doctors statement to return after ALL absences".... and a little further down the letter states, "the written doctors statement needs to be presented to our health office the day your child returns to school or the absence will be noted as unexcused."
MY issue with this is that I didn't receive the letter until Saturday, in the mail. The doctors offices are not open on the weekend. Ds has school tomorrow and I'm suppose to bring doctors statements tomorrow when ds goes back to school. So all I could do, short of keeping ds out of school tomorrow so that I can get letters for 3 days, was print out each doctor visit statement from our online medical charts. I hope that is good enough for them. I also printed a copy of ds'steacher grandfathers obituary to take in hoping that will satisfy them.
Boy, I'm not happy at all. I guess we will see what happens tomorrow when I take what I have in. I told dh if one of us ends up having to go to jail over this, I'm the SAHM since dh is a pilot and is out if town a bunch, so he should be the one to go to jail so I can stay home with ds.... and the headline would be much better saying "airline pilot goes to jail for son having 4 unexcused absences" (okay, not funny, but still gotta say, haha).
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I haven't discussed this with the school yet, I was wondering what you ladies had to offer on the matter.
Our families live all over. We fly standby since my husband is a pilot, so free doesn't mean easy. Usually school breaks are the harder periods to fly for us and summer seems so far away. We took ds out of school in December before break to visit my inlaws for five days. It has been 6-months or greater since visiting my family and we would like to do that soon for 5 days or so, any less doesn't give us much time to visit with everyone since its a whole day of traveling there and a whole day traveling back.
I think this is going to be a problem throughout the school years. Since ds is in kindergarten, we have just begun. I don't think I can go a whole school year, any school year without flying to see family, and we can't afford to buy tickets to travel on holiday breaks.
So my question is, what is done if there are unexcused absences? Is it just noted that a child has been unexcused? Or is this a matter of social services possibly questioning us? Not that we have anything to hide, we just want to visit family. I know it may be hard for a child to get back in the routine of things, so I'm thinking very hard about all of this. I just miss my family so much since moving away 3-years ago. They don't fly free, and my mom had a stroke a couple years ago, since then she has been afraid of going too far from home.
I'm getting stressed about this, I feel I may have to talk to dh about moving back "home" to be closer to my side of family, but we are happy here, our area has so much going on and the schools are suppose to be much better than back home. back home was so dull and not much to offer.... why did my family choose there to live? Thats not really a question for you gals.
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Post by sharon on Jan 2, 2012 19:15:43 GMT -6
I really don't think it will be a big deal. You have to miss a lot more school that 10 days to get in trouble for educational neglect. I think you just let the school know as you know, and realize that it will take work on your part to help your child catch up on missed work. I find it hard to believe you are the only one with a kid missing school.
As a kid, I had to miss school for Jewish holidays. School was closed for one or two holiday days, but I missed probably 5 more each year to attend synagogue and celebrate holidays. It was hard at times because I'd have to work extra to catch up, but it was just what was necessary.
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Post by brandi6685 on Jan 2, 2012 19:40:56 GMT -6
As long as you know a little bit ahead of time you can get any school work that ds will miss for him to do while he is gone. My mom always took us out of school for camping trips and other things we always just got our homework and would do it on the way there and back. I think it would be fine and even a chance for you to see what ds is doing in school a little closer:)
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Post by jrose on Jan 2, 2012 19:44:10 GMT -6
When I was in school we went to the Philippines twice for 3 weeks at a time to visit family. My parents let the school know way ahead of time and our teachers gave us work to do ahead of time and to do while we were gone so we could keep caught up with the rest of the class. I also grew up in Iowa so I'm not sure if anything would differ up here as to being gone for long periods of time.
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Post by lilmermaid on Jan 2, 2012 20:01:27 GMT -6
I don't think you should have any problems with it as long as you let them know ahead of time. I'm curious as to what is considered unexcused? I think as long as they know he is absent it's considered excused. That's my understanding in our district anyways. I have pulled DD1 out for various days and just called the attendance line. For us you don't have to give a reason, just give her name. In my book family always comes first no matter what!
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Post by bunsy on Jan 2, 2012 20:19:08 GMT -6
A planned trip is NOT an unexcused absence. You as a parent can excuse any absence. If it becomes excessive, the district may question you. Unexcused absences are when a student isn't in school and no one calls to let the school know.
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Post by sharon on Jan 2, 2012 20:22:21 GMT -6
When I was in school an unexcused absence was for other than illness or a doctor's appointment or some other school-district approved reason. I once got detention in high school because my mom would write a note saying it was OK with her that I missed school, but would not lie and say I was sick.
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Post by bunsy on Jan 2, 2012 20:24:17 GMT -6
Interesting Sharon. Frequently I just called and told the school that my child wouldn't be there that day. I purposely didn't give them a reason to see if they would challenge me. I figure MY kid, MY decision.
Now, the year Ds2 missed 35 years of junior high, the DID question us and we had some hoops to jump through--primarily seeing the school psychologist and eventually diagnosing DS2's anxiety issues.
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Post by love on Jan 2, 2012 20:25:59 GMT -6
How often are you looking to pull him out? I do not think it is that big of a deal for him to miss a few days here and there for family time. I often think when we are on vacation at a typical non break time for schools that there is a ton of kids there. I think it is more common then you think.
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Post by sharon on Jan 2, 2012 20:40:26 GMT -6
Interesting Sharon. Frequently I just called and told the school that my child wouldn't be there that day. I purposely didn't give them a reason to see if they would challenge me. I figure MY kid, MY decision. Now, the year Ds2 missed 35 years of junior high, the DID question us and we had some hoops to jump through--primarily seeing the school psychologist and eventually diagnosing DS2's anxiety issues. Yeah, I would bet missing 35 years of junior high would cause some questions
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Post by bunsy on Jan 2, 2012 20:43:18 GMT -6
He still got As though!
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Post by sharon on Jan 2, 2012 20:44:39 GMT -6
Wow! That's awesome!
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Post by dara1012 on Jan 2, 2012 20:45:08 GMT -6
When I was in elementary school spring break always fell during Holy Week. My parents are both ministers so Holy Week meant that they had church services, Thurs, Fri, Sun (usually 2) and home communion for people who could not attend church. My parents would take us to visit my grandparents and one year to Disney World a week or two after spring break. They just explained to our teachers why vacation had to happen after spring break and we got our assignments ahead of time.
The year we went to Disney World I was in 6th Grade, my teachers said I would learn more in 1 day at Epcot than I would that week in class.
I would say talking to the school ahead of time would be the way to go and making the decision that is right for your family.
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Post by charliesmom05 on Jan 2, 2012 20:53:24 GMT -6
Thanks ladies. First, I'm sure it is common to take kids out of school. I was just reading the schools policy for missed days and found this some where else but read the same..... Family Activity We understand that students may need to be absent from school occasionally to participate in family activities/vacations. However, family activities/vacations which cause students to be absent more than 5 school days are discouraged and will result in unexcused absences. Your child’s academic progress depends upon his/her consistent attendance and subsequent access to all educational programming. Although missed assignments can be completed, it is extremely difficult to replicate instructional activities, discussions, small group work, etc. that have taken place while your child was absent from school. www.priorlake-savage.k12.mn.us/ew/lib/ew/ParStuHandbk%2010-11.pdfI don't have a plan for how often we want to take ds out of school. I would rather not have ds miss school bc I know how hard it can be on a kid. We moved around a lot growing up and it was difficult for me. I will have to come up with something, but everyone wants us to do things every month it seems and we just can't do that. My sister inlaw wants us to go skiing in Colorado the 1st week of February, but we want to visit my family then. We are use to going whenever dh has time off, we have never made plans for anything. With his job and crazy schedule, we aren't really able to. But we have to do something. If I ever see our traveling is getting to be hard on ds, we will just get use to FaceTime via computers :-)
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Post by charliesmom05 on Jan 2, 2012 20:59:46 GMT -6
. The year we went to Disney World I was in 6th Grade, my teachers said I would learn more in 1 day at Epcot than I would that week in class. My husband says the same thing. He has pilot friends or has flown with guys that say they don't have a problem taking their kids out of school, their kids will learn more on their vacations traveling than they would at school. I don't disagree, except the only thing ds will learn when visiting my side of family is how dysfunctional we can be (haha)
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