As I sat in advisory last year, Upper School English teacher Cory Zeller began to go through her somewhat weekly routine of passing out papers displaying unexcused absences or tardies from class to advisees. As I browsed through my list, I realized that I had unexcused absences from days I couldn’t even remember back to. Because of this, Zeller and I had to work together to go through the calendar and jog our memory of that day in attempt to figure out whether I was really unexcused or if the office had yet to clear me.

Being unable to remember certain days was only one flaw of the old attendance policy.

In previous years, advisors had all attendance records of their advisees and any tardy or absence was to be cleared simply before the end of a semester. This meant that right before the semester ended, handfuls of parents were flooding the Upper School Office’s inbox and voicemail box, excusing their child for absences and/or tardies.

When absences and tardies built up to multiple page lists and parents started to excuse their children in bulk, the excuses became less legitimate and individual to particular occasions. Instead, it turned into a phone call or email where the parents listed off dates where their child “wasn’t late or absent,” without always clarifying to ensure that was actually the case.

The new attendance policy will eliminate the issue of an ever–growing list of absences and tardies by only allowing excuses to be made within three days of the event. Because of this, attendance records are now accessible to students on the portal at all times.

By being able to always view absences and tardies whenever students wish, people will no longer be unable to remember back to certain days where they were “absent” or “tardy.”

With a much shorter duration to clear an absence or tardy, it will become harder for parents and students to be dishonest with excuses. Three days is short enough for teachers to remember whether or not the student was there on time or there at all, opposed to before when they would’ve had to think back to many weeks or even a few months before.

In years past, students relied heavily on their advisors to notify them when they had an unexcused absence or tardy. The change of policy now puts all the pressure on the student to have self reliance and check the portal in a timely manner. The new policy is teaching students responsibility.

Although there has been lots of controversy about the new attendance policy, it ultimately has the capability to make students more honest and responsible.

I found myself stressed in Registrar, Matt McCaw’s office just four days into the school year, this time not because of the dreaded add-drop form, but because of my first unexcused absence of the semester. Although I am not the type to get upset about this sort of thing, this time I was annoyed because I was actually at Special Chorus that G1 period.

Soon, McCaw explained the new mystery of the attendance policy was to me. Here is what I learned: when a student gets an unexcused absence, they have to do one of two things within a strict three day period. They either have to speak to the teacher who gave the absence if it was a mistake or get a parent/guardian to call the attendance line and excuse them. After this, they also need to fill out an excused absence form. The difference between this and the old policy is the three-day timeline. If one has an unexcused absence on Friday, it needs to be excused by Monday, or else 1% will be deducted from the final grade for that specific class.

After that meeting with McCaw, I rushed to Emma Castaldi, the new Upper– School Music teacher to find out why I was being penalized. She soon realized that she was just having trouble with the system and cleared my record, but the whole situation made me strongly dislike the new policy.

The three-day timer is over-doing it. I get the idea of having a deadline for this type of thing — that it doesn’t make sense for people to be excusing themselves two months after their violation when they don’t even remember why they missed — but the three days is unnecessarily short.

Say you are sick on Friday and continue to be through Monday. Your cut-off window has completely passed without you even being able to see your teachers. I think we should at least give the student three attended school days.

Second of all, the Portal. I have come to accept that the portal is our future, but I’ve talked to multiple teachers and students, including the one that gave me an absence on accident, who are having trouble with the system. Upper School history teacher, Susan Elliott said, “Creating these timed rules while simultaneously putting in a new way of finding and checking absences is a recipe for failure.”

Since the penalty for one unexcused absence is 1% off of the final grade for that class. If you or a teacher makes one mistake, you could go from an A- to a B+.

I didn’t even know how to check my absences until I was two days past my first one. There should have been some sort of introduction to the system either during orientation or one of the first graderooms.

Overall, I don’t think this new policy is going to benefit the student body. I understand the purpose, but there are major edits to be made. In addition to being based off a system that many people in the school aren’t entirely comfortable with yet, it’s excessively strict to the point where I see a lot of exceptions having to be made.