Friday, March 09, 2007

Pay for Elective Absences?!?!

A school in California is now sending the parents the bill when their kids miss classes for elective reasons. The School says that their kids take an average of 2.3 days per year off for reasons such as vacations or other non-illness reasons. They also say it costs them around $225,000 a year in missed funding. See the whole article.

2 questions here....do you think kids should get "personal" days off at school?? Or should they be in school when the doors are open?

2nd question....do you think the school has any business billing the parents for missed school days? Or is it just a good ploy to help make parents aware of the issues??

Let us know your thoughts.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thats ridiculous. People pay the schools through their taxes whether they go or not.. the school doesn't lose any money. I hope they don't impose that fine on homeschoolers!

Anonymous said...

This is interesting to me. When my kids were in elementary school there were times when our vacation started earlier or went longer than the school vacation. We always got homework and made sure the kids were up to date before they returned to school. We receive reminders from our school if children miss a certain number of days (excused or "unexcused")- I think that is good but to send a bill is a little bit too much. I would like to ask a question from the parent point of view - can we take off our tax bill a portion of what we paid to make up for days when teachers, teach nothing because they think it is too close to vacation, too close to a special event, attendance might be low, etc? How many days prior to a vacation should teachers be allowed to show videos because nothing gets taught anyway. You teach for those who are there and those who are not should make up their work just like any other time. Just a thought!

Anonymous said...

That's Crazy...I have no children in school; yet I still pay for the school taxes. If anyone should get re-paid for the children missing school it should be those of us who have no children left in school but still have to pay the taxes for them. Maybe school taxes should only be paid by those who have children in the school system! There's a Thought!

Anonymous said...

Wow. This post was very sad and disappointing to me as a public educator. First of all, yes, schools do lose money when students are not present. California operates on a different system and I do believe they receive funding based on student attendance. Also, in the state of Michigan, funding is based off of two student count days - on in October and another in February.

I do support parents whom chose to homeschool - as long as the student receives a quality education. Too often, the public school loses out on money b/c of homeschool kids that get dumped back into the system a few years later having learned very little during their parents' homeschool "experiment".

Finally, as a third grade teacher, I do not understand what anonymous says about teachers not teaching. I have to make the conclusion that this parent does not actually volunteer in their students' classroom.

Education has changed dramatically in the last few years - in third grade students are adding and subtracting fractions, doing basic algebraic equations, and solving geometry problems.