Education is an important subject to me. I spent a lot of years as a teacher, and it’s not possible to turn off my thoughts about education in general now that I no longer teach.
\nI was half-listening to the radio today and heard part of a blurb about a school that planned to address student absenteeism by charging the parents when the students were not in school.<\/p>\n
\nSchools receive Federal financial aid based on the number of children in attendance. The student has to be in school for a minimum number of hours for it to be considered a day. Of course the school builds it’s budget for the year around the assumption that each student is going to be in school x number of days less a percentage for sick days.
\nOne school has decided to charge parents for days when their children miss school. I haven’t had the chance to check the facts on this, but if the school looses the $40 in aid, they plan to bill the parent to make up for that lost aid.
\nI wonder if the school is on the verge of bankruptcy, or if this is a ploy to lay responsibility for truancy where it belongs? I suppose it could be both. At any rate, it will be interesting to see if a test case is taken to court by a parent who objects to being billed for their child’s education.
\nThere are a lot of reasons why a child misses school. Illness, truancy, family vacation that falls during school, and griding poverty that prevents a family from clothing a child or paying school fees are a few of them. I believe that a parent needs to consider it a duty to see that their child gets to school.
\nI know that the economy makes it necessary for many families to have two sources of income. But when a problem like truancy arises, the parents still must take responsibility for the action of their children. Those parents need to be delivering the students to the door, and then picking them up at the end of the day. The school needs to assist by making the school a closed campus, where attendance is taken at each period, and absence is reported immediately.
\nThe underlying issue is that we need to make it clear to our children that they have a responsibility to learn, that while school may be fun, it must also be a serious endeavor. We need to prepare them for a full life experience, and that preparation need to begin at home, encouraging a thirst for knowledge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Education is an important subject to me. I spent a lot of years as a teacher, and it’s not possible to turn off my thoughts about education in general now that I no longer teach. I was half-listening to the … Continue reading