Some senior year students are in huge trouble since the unexcused absences ratio might cause them to miss graduation day or repeat courses.

The government’s education policy requires that the unexcused absence rate should be under 12%, if it is that high or higher, it will cause problems in their classes and may even prevent them from graduating all together.

“According to the Ministerio de Educacion, we need to have all the students under 12% rate of unexcused absences per course, that is being measured every bimester,” Susana Arias, Learning Center teacher, said.

This new school year, the director has taken a step forward with this problem and started a strict policy with teachers to take attendance every day for every class, this could support their idea of checking in who is attending school and who is not. 

“This time, we are including this as a requirement for graduation, last year we weren’t being strict with this measure, because we didnt take into account the absences so we didn’t have reliable data,” Arias said.

The seniors are stressed out of not being able to attend their graduation, or even to lose a subject because of their attendance. They have even been taken to the superintendents to see how this can be solved. 

“Students are a little bit worried, they’ve been coming in asking about their absence rate, they’re been really on top of their classes I think this year there are seniors that might be truly worried about failing the year for different reasons,” Arias said.

For these seniors, the policy changed this year. If they are not passing a course due to unexcused absences, the teacher does not have the obligation to help them recoup. 

“Basically the 12% for this year works this way, let’s say that you are failing the subject, the teacher actually does not have to give you the privilege to recoup, next year, we will be more stricts, and you could actually repeat the subject,” Darrien George, High School Vice Principal, said. 

The school provided the students at the beginning of the year, the changes they had made on this new area, and the consequences they would have if they did not obey.

“We let the students know about this, early in the year, gave them a heads up, and they are monitoring their absences,” George said.

The school is working on emphasizing more on absences, since the school believes that making students understand the importance of discipline will help them when they are older. 

“I think because years prior there wasn’t the same amount of contatibility, if years pass on and this is seen as an expectation will have less unexcused absences,” George said.