Attendance

Attendance Office 
425-413-6209
[email protected]

Attendance Policy -
Philosophy

The regularity of attendance is a major contributing factor in reaching the instructional objectives of a course. The following procedures have been designed by the Tahoma Senior High School staff to develop cooperation between parents/guardians and school authorities in order to assist students in establishing lifelong habits or reliability and promptness. Laws of the State of Washington specify that parents have the primary responsibility for ensuring the attendance of their students at school. The law further states that students shall be regular and punctual in attendance.

Definitions and Procedures 

Early Dismissal/Late Arrival Process

A student who arrives late must check through the attendance office to obtain an admit slip immediately upon arrival on campus. To excuse the late arrival, students may bring a note from home or the parent/guardian needs to email or call the attendance office.  For early dismissals, a parent/guardian should email or call the attendance office with as much notice as possible (1 hour or more when possible to avoid a potentially delayed dismissal).  Students may also bring in a signed note to the office.  Students then may either pick up their early dismissal pass directly from the attendance office or the attendance office aides will deliver it to the student’s class. 

Excused Absences

Illness, family emergencies (e.g. funeral or serious illness), and appointments of a medical, dental, or legal nature represent excused absences. Work is not an excusable absence.

Pre-arranged Absences

Absences for other reasons may be excused if the parent calls or e-mails the attendance office prior to the planned absence. While absences may be excused by the school, students should understand their academic progress may be adversely affected and some coursework may not be able to be made up. A student with a planned absence for 3 or more days will need to complete the pre-arranged absence form and submit it to the attendance office before the first date of absence.
Click here to access pre-arranged absence form

Tardiness

Students are tardy if they are not in their assigned classroom when the tardy bell rings. Students have up to 20 minutes to get to class to be considered tardy; after 20 minutes, students are considered absent from that period. The attendance office tracks the number of tardies students have and refers to admin for discipline as necessary.

Truancy

Truancy is defined as absence from school or class without the knowledge and/or consent of the parent/guardian or absence from school of class once arriving on campus without the knowledge or consent of the school. If an absence is not excused within 48 hours it is truant. Students may be denied the opportunity to submit academic work.

Students are subject to discipline up to and including long-term suspension for truancy.

Unexcused Absences

RCW 28A.225.010 places the responsibility of student attendance on the parent or legal guardian. Absences other than those defined as excused, given with the permission of the parent or legal guardian, are considered parental or unexcused absences (unexcused by the state but excused by the parent). Parents and/or legal guardians should understand that any absences will affect academic progress and, in the case of unexcused absences, academic work may be denied. For this reason, we recommend that parents plan ahead with pre-arranged absences.

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