Failure to attend school...

... I received a summons for my high-school son and myself to appear for a hearing. My son has missed a lot of classes over health issues, mostly one period. I tried to make sure he had notes, (and his mom has him half the time) but he was not particularly diligent about turning them in.

Has anyone been through this before? What should I expect?

It is serious so be prepared for the hearing. You may actually have a complaint filed against you and your son.

Texas Education code on Failure to Attend School

If you have medical records of doctor visits, prescriptions prescribed etc.; I would take those with me to the visit. Otherwise try to document in writing what the illness was, when it started and when your son missed school.

I don't have children and have never been through this. Just trying to provide some resources I found.

http://www.jp.hctx.net/truancy/jurisdiction.htm

Good luck!

Sonia

...... believe me I'm taking this seriously. One problem is that I share custody and his mom does all his doctor visits. But I'm sure she can come up with a ledger.

Thank you for your link, I will go and read.

be an excused absence. Period. We got in the same mess with my daughter being absent due to illness, and even though she had notes from me, they tried to make her make up the hours after school and on weekends, to the point of it being just ridiculous. She was being punished by them for being sick. It got so bad that we ended up pulling her out and homeschool her now. The school started having some drug and gang issues too, which was another reason, but instead of worrying about those issues, they were worried about punishing sick kids... Now that their funds are apparently tied to school attendance, it's turned into a nightmare.


Wanted to add: A lot of kids from our district are being homeschooled now for that very reason. They don't seem to realize that by going overboard with the punishments for absences to increase their funding, they're actually losing students & losing more funding than they would just over the absences.

because of her child's absences from school (they didn't know the child was skipping school). I think they had to pay a fine... $500 I think. But you have a legitimate reason, so just as Sonia suggested, I would take ALL medical records to the hearing.

Just fyi, my granddaughter was very, very ill about a year or so ago (she missed almost the entire year), but we kept in touch with her teachers (for make-up work) AND the principal on a weekly basis. The principal even visited her in the hospital. Not trying to be preachy, but it's the parent's responsibility to make sure that the lines of communication remain open between all involved.

From personal experience, even if you have provided the school with a Dr's excuse, the geniuses in the attendance office often fail to note that on the dreaded "permanent record." I had a daughter who had to have extensive dental work. I got hauled into the JP court by the school district over her "unexcused" absences. I discovered that 75% of the excuses we had gotten from the dentist had never been recorded on her attendance record. Fortunately, I had a photocopy of the dates of her dental appointments when I went to court. I'm sure the schools hate my guts now, since I now hand-carry any Dr's excuse to the attendance office and force the office staff to make a photocopy of the original, which I keep in my personal "permanent record."

No student can miss more than ten days of school, excused or unexcused absences, without making up the time missed over ten days. That's state law. The state gives local school boards a lot of latitude over how to make it up. Locally, here, students must go to tutoring for the classes missed with the teacher of the class missed before or after school. Some other districts in our area also allow community service, to be signed off at agencies like Catholic Charities, Goodwill, and the like.

If your student is going to be missing a lot of class, you might think about homebound services. In these cases, the district sends a traveling teacher out to absent students to pick up work, ask questions, and the like. The student is not absent at all in this case.

As a non-custodial parent, I know that it can be extremely taxing to find yourself at the mercy of the other parent, and if there is animosity, that really can be difficult.

Now, if there are fewer than 10 absences, but they're unexcused, you may be liable for a ticket, starting at $110 and going up north of $1500 if the judge believes that you are abetting non-attendance willfully. In this case, proving they're really excused is your best policy. Your child needs to be impressed with the fact that when he turns 18, these tickets will be his alone, and so it's in his own best interest to be diligent about reporting excused absences.

More than ten days and unexcused, the judge will usually let you submit a plan for improvement if s/he is convinced that you're not the cause or an accomplice to the skipping. And if your ex is not on the Student Information Card, s/he needs to be, so that s/he, too, can be called to these hearings and held liable for these behaviors, instead of hanging you out to dry.

Our local municipal court judge hears these cases, and he is a common sense sort of person who just wants to make sure the student is getting enough attendance to get credit for courses. I hope that's the case there, too.

Sorry for the rambling nature of this post. I hope any of it helps.