Schools Find Ways to Tie Attendance to Grades, Graduation

Now that they have the ability to petition for freedom from Los Angeles Unified School District policies, several school-based management campuses in the San Fernando Valley have said they will fail students strictly on the basis of attendance.

Birmingham, Chatsworth, Kennedy and Taft high schools began this year to restrict students to between 15 and 20 absences per semester.

Such policies are against the rules for most high schools, which are governed by a districtwide prohibition against directly linking grades to attendance.

Administrators at Granada Hills, Grant, Monroe, Van Nuys and Verdugo Hills high schools say they are reviewing similar policies.

At school-based management campuses, decisions about operations such as budget and teaching methods are made by a leadership council composed of parents, teachers and administrators. To flout district policy, the schools are required to apply for waivers.

In the case of the attendance policy, the waivers have already been granted, said Joe Rao, administrative coordinator for the district’s reform unit, which oversees school-based management schools.

The rush to toughen attendance policies at the school-based management high schools comes as many regular high schools are shaping attendance policies of their own within district guidelines. Administrators who are not allowed to fail students because of attendance are using participation in graduation ceremonies as an incentive for seniors to stay in school.

All of the schools have an appeals process that students can follow in case of long-term illness, injury or other extenuating circumstances.

Dick Browning, who oversees the district’s 49 high schools, said administrators hope that by 1994, 95% of students will be in school each day. Last year, high school attendance rates averaged 82.5%, he said.

Donna Smith, principal of Chatsworth High school, where 15 missed days means a failing grade, said the goal of the new policy is not to punish students.

“The objective is to get the kids here,” Smith said. “Some students have an attitude that attendance is not important. We want to change that attitude.”

At Kennedy High School in Granada Hills, seniors must be present for 90% of the 180 school days to participate in graduation ceremonies. Students in all grades will fail if they miss 20 days of a class.

Sharon Smith, assistant principal in charge of attendance for Kennedy, said part of the school’s intention is to keep seniors on campus as role models for younger students.

“Seniors get ‘senioritis’ and tend to get sick after lunch and on prom day,” Smith said. “Some of them have an attitude that they’ve been through this before--that they know what they can get away with. We’re no longer going to accept that.”

Administrators said the policies do not target habitual truants--who are not motivated by threats of failing grades--but the students in the middle who receive “Cs” and “Ds” but still hope to graduate.

But Milton Dooley, a consultant for the Los Angeles County Office of Education, said that in other districts in the county, where similar policies are already in place, questions arise about the adverse effect of the policies on chronic truants.

“You almost always run into the problem if a kid knows he’s getting an F in a class anyway, he’s not going to go anymore,” Dooley said. “What are you going to do with him?”

Rao said the district will evaluate the success of the attendance policies in about a year. Marshall High School in Los Angeles is the only other school in the district with the policy in place, he said, but many others are considering implementing the stricter policies.

“Interest in it is really heating up right now,” he said. “These are schools really interested in reform.”

Elizabeth George, a senior at Taft High School, said students are keenly aware of the policy. “It’s already working,” George said. “(Friday) is senior ditch day, but most seniors are going to show up anyway. If you’re a senior you can’t afford to fail.

“That’s one of the biggest fears.”