Thursday, October 4, 2012

Here...Here...Here....Absent

Here's the text of a blog post I started. Once I drafted this, I thought to head to the Philadelphia Daily News instead....I started this on Oct 6th....

Sometimes 140 characters just isn't enough!

Lately I've been thinking about a kid I had a few years back. Much to my chagrin, many of my 6th graders and their families choose to enroll in a local charter school after moving on from our K-6 elementary school. Be it known, I don't believe in the concept of diverting public money and resources away from an already underfunded district to fund a privately managed educational experiment, all while holding the schools from whom the money was diverted to higher standards than that of the ones who received the diverted funds and resources. But I digress!

It was on a Saturday in June when I learned that a former student of mine had not been attending school and as a result got into some trouble which landed him in jail (or likely some other juvenile placement). He and his family chose to enroll in the local charter middle/high school.

What troubles me most is not knowing what protocols are in place for students who are enrolled in charter schools and who may end up truant. What steps must these publicly funded, privately run and managed schools take to ensure that their students are attending school? Since the idea is less oversight, who is monitoring that such protocols are adhered to and with fidelity?

Notes and phone calls home, steps that the teacher has taken, CEH 14, C-31, CSAP, RTII, counselors, home visits, and the list goes on of the truancy vocabulary that we employ and the steps we take when a child is absent THREE times (even sporadically) without having submitted an absence note!

So I just want to know, what do our charter counterparts do? To whom do they report? What is the process? IS there a process? I need answers!

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