T
TR041
Guest
My daughter is a senior in a public school in New York. She is in the top ten of her class, good kid, never in trouble. She was called into the office this past week and informed that she had three late to schools (since September of 01) and therefore would have to stay for 4:30 detention. The three late to schools were all because she was ill and she did bring in a parent note indicating such (she suffers migraines and sometimes the medicine takes an hour or two to kick in). The principal told her that a parent excuse is not good enough and it is an illegal absence. The principal indicated that parents will lie for their kids so they don't accept parent excuses for in-late. However, they do accept them when a child is out all day. Seems to me they are advocating taking the whole day off instead of saying good job, you came in to complete your work even though you might not be feeling 100%. Is this true? Can they tell a parent that their excuse is "not good enough" because parents of high school children tend to lie on the excuse (they do not enforce this rule with the elementary age children). Also, can I request to see how they marked my daughter with regard to state aid? I am interested to see if they consider her legal to recoup state aid and punish her anyway or if they marked her illegally absent and denied the district the state aid for her attendance. Just an added note, when I called the principal and told him this was ridiculous and perhaps they should take a serious look at her background because her gpa doesn't indicate an attendance problem, the principal told me that he was sorry I was so unhappy with his decision and there were plenty of other school districts out there for me if I didn't like this one. Please if anyone can help me out with this, I would appreciate it.