Attendance

It is the responsibility of parents and guardians to see that their child attends school regularly. Children learn responsibility from their parents and guardians. It is important that you stress coming to school regularly and on time.

Students who enter class tardy are disruptive to classroom instruction. The teacher must stop instruction to prepare the tardy child for class or the child must wait and perhaps miss some of the instruction.

Every school day is important to the education of your child. Research tells us that the
best learning takes place during the interaction of the teacher and child during class discussions. Simply making up the missed work does not begin to take the place of actual class attendance.

It is important that students attend school regularly and on time. We all know that there may be times when a student in unable to come to school on a particular day. If that is the case, we ask you to please call in to the school (703-753-7741) in the morning to let us know that your child will not be here that day. You can even call in before school opens or the night before and leave a message on our answering machine.

Whenever a student is not in school and we have not heard from you, our office staff will attempt to contact you by phone. As you know, we do this because we want to ensure that all is well with your child and that your child is where he or she should be. We will, of course, first try to contact you at home but if we cannot reach you there we will try to reach someone either at work or by a cell phone number. We know that calling your home or work may be disruptive for you and extra work for us, but it is necessary in this day and age that if your child is missing from school that we find out as soon as possible where he or she might be. We do not mean to disturb you and we apologize in advance if we do, however we need to make sure your child is safe and secure.

When your student returns to school, please send a written excuse with him or her to be given to the classroom teacher. For students who have missed a number of days of school or have been tardy a number of times, we will be sending letters to parents informing them of the number of missed days or days tardy from school.

Students are responsible for making up work when they are absent. For your convenience, a school calendar is included in this handbook.

Thank you for your cooperation and support. By working together we can better ensure the success and safety of all our students. If you have any questions regarding this program, please feel free to contact us.

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