Editor's note

Here’s a question for you:  Your child wakes up on a Monday and is running a fever. Or that cough he had over the weekend took a turn for the worst. What do you do? Of course you’re going to keep him home from school, and if you work outside the home, you’ll have to take a sick day, too. It’s what a good, responsible parent would do. Not only do you want your son to rest and recover, but you don’t want him to get his classmates sick, either.

Since last September, my 10-year-old has missed 5 days of school, 4 of them due to illness, and 1 for an out-of-town trip. Imagine my surprise when I get a letter from the school in February, a thinly veiled threat, saying that my daughter has too many absences and I may be summoned before the School Attendance Review Board, a panel consisting of a chairperson, a police officer, a psychologist and the principal. I can just picture that Nuremberg-like meeting now:

“Ms. Armitage, WHY HAS YOUR DAUGHTER MISSED 5 DAYS OF SCHOOL?!”

Frightened into confessing the truth, I reply, “Uh . . . because she was sick.” Then, a school administrator tells me, I must sign a contract that outlines a strategy for better attendance.

My friend’s son has missed 20 days of school. He has asthma and gets ill very easily. She’s a teacher and has missed as many days, too, to nurse her son back to health. I know first-hand that she is a wonderful mother. Next week, she has to appear before the district attorney to explain her egregious parenting.

So, what is driving our public schools to police the judgment of good parents and in some cases, threaten legal action? Average Daily Attendance. For every day that your child occupies a seat in the classroom, the school gets paid for it.

“Every student generates a unit of base income for their district,” explains Barry Blade, assistant superintendent of business services for the Fountain Valley School District. “In 2007-08, a student in the FVSD generates $5,515 for the year.” After all the number-crunching, Blade estimates his district loses about $1,015 per student, per year, due to absenteeism.

Some schools have chosen positive reinforcement as a way to boost attendance and keep the much-needed funds flowing in. Last year, a Century High junior in the Santa Ana Unified School District won a new Chevrolet Aveo for a semester of perfect attendance. That cash-poor district has also raffled off new televisions in previous years to students who show up every day.

Look, I understand that the county’s public schools are severely underfunded, and now there’s pressure to cut another $204 million from the budget, according to ocregister.com. Good, tenured teachers will lose their jobs and our children will be crammed into overpopulated classrooms. But I don’t think bribing students with cars or threatening parents to send their sick children to school is a smart approach to the problem. In fact, they are acts of desperation. Can’t school administrators understand basic logic, basic math: If we send our sick children to school, they will get other children sick and there will be even fewer bodies in the classroom the next day.

Maybe it’s the system that’s ailing. Perhaps our state should pay schools for total enrollment, not daily attendance. That way, the next time my daughter gets sick (and she will, no matter what I promised in a contract), we can both rest more easily.


Editor Lynn Armitage