The widespread epidemic at Langley known as senioritis has been responsible for many class absences over the years. But ever since the tie between grades and absences was broken two years ago, additional reasons for absence, whether it be mid-day Chipotle runs or “broken” alarm clocks, have been on the rise.
Langley’s attendance policy changes went into effect the beginning of the 2008-09 school year, after the county removed the rule tying three unexcused absences to a failing grade. The motivations behind such a change were from a large amount of parent complaints of students failing courses based solely on lack of attendance.
Although Langley is known for its academically driven student body, students began to take advantage of the lack of repercussions for potential “absences,” with the connection between grades and absences broken. “Now that there’s a larger safety net for potential absences and tardies, I felt that is was so much easier to deal with missing a couple classes or school days once in a while,” said an anonymous junior.
It is this mindset that has caused the drop in student attendance since the policy change. “I think you are seeing students not come to school as much on a regular basis” said Administrator Corey Bowerman.
This year, however, attendance seems to have been brought back up. This may be due to changes such as last year’s institution of a new tardy policy, which pushed students to arrive to class on time. Senior Government teacher and one of the major advocates for the policy changes, Matthew Kissling, said he “saw an increase in tardies at the very beginning of that [attendance policy change],” which was one of his reasons for pushing the tardy policy, as a means to maintain equilibrium with student absences.
When asked about the recent separation of attendance and grades, senior Sam Kobor agreed that the tardy policy helped increase attendance, saying, “I think it’s more fair to students that their grades are not tied to absences, but the administration kind of balanced it out with the tardy policy.”
The introduction of the Langley Leap internship, an internship program for seniors that is an alternative to the last week of school, may also help the drive to raise student attendance back up for seniors. In order for seniors to qualify for this new program, they can’t have any unexcused absences in the second semester and are limited to three excused absences per quarter, with exceptions.