Tough talk on the reality of partnering with parents when it comes to school policies and missing classroom time. Are we empowering bad behavior or we effectively collaborating with families? Who suffers the consequences of parent decisions and whose responsibility is it to solve?
My view is there is a middle position which recognizes parents as a primary educator and the need to insist on school attendance and work missed getting made up. At my previous school I allowed students to miss 5 days of school per semester at their parents discretion. After the 5th time, all remaining absences were unexcused unless they had a doctors note indicating they were under a doctors care. So I didn’t get into the impossible position of deciding what was legit absence or not as long as the parents excused it. But I wasn’t allowing parents unlimited discretion either.
There was no disciplinary consequence for the 6th or 7th absence other than the fact all work missed on those days were F’s. But I didn’t add dentions or Saturday school to “make up” those days.
That worked for the most part.