By Daniela Coe-McNamara
Staff Writer
The two recent changes to the attendance policy at Costa enforce punishments for unexcused absences too severely. In addition, the new system harasses students into spending time, effort and money on visiting the doctor’s office far more frequently than is necessary.
According to Vice Principal Kristin Wolberg, the severe punishment of Study Zone was put in place to encourage students’ attendance by creating a less than favorable consequence of spending four hours of their Saturday at school. However, instead of taking such an authoritarian approach for such a minor offense, the administration should provide various warnings, allowing students to take responsibility by keeping track of their accumulating absences before issuing unnecessary punishments.
The fear of Study Zone may also cause students who have illnesses to come to school feeling less than adequate, when they should be spending their time getting better. This forcible approach unfairly pressures students into going to school even when they are sick and are well aware they will not be able to perform to the best of their abilities.
Forcing students to find some way to excuse an absence that does not fall under the excused criteria puts more stress on students, contradicting Costa’s supposed new stress-reduction plan. According to Wolberg, the stress reduction plan and the absence policy are unrelated, yet some students, like seniors who are dealing with the stressful college application process, miss school due to stress or other underlying factors, like lack of sleep.
The other policy change, the requirement of a doctor’s note after 14 illness absences, is simply unreasonable, for some students have weaker immune systems than others but do not or cannot always go to the doctor. According to Nationwide Children’s Hospital, children should stay home from school, but may not require medical attention, for even minor illness, like nausea, headache or fever.
Another contradictory point for the new illness absence rule is the money involved in making students visit the doctor more often. Requiring students to visit a doctor forces families to pay more in doctor bills, prescriptions and insurance rates. However, according to Wolberg, for any absence that should be excused as an illness, students should be able to provide valid documentation of the illness, and if they cannot, this is where the individual attention aspect of the policy comes in.
According to Wolberg, Costa administration will constantly monitor the attendance of each student and will continue to monitor the attendance data to make more changes in coming years. However, there are plenty of more pressing issues, such as the newly implemented office hour and the lack of air conditioning in various buildings across campus, instead of a ridiculous policy change that only creates unnecessary tension between students and staff.
In trying to establish the model high school image of perfect attendance, Costa administration only succeeded in creating even more friction between administration and students, and between parents and staff. Instead of assigning unnecessary Study Zones and forcing doctors visits, the administration should focus more on the problems handed to them daily by the students, parents and teachers of Costa.
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