Attendance Policy

 

Please contact the Attendance office at (609)298-0025 ext 1112 or by email at [email protected] to report your child(ren) absent.

 

Students enrolled at Bordentown Regional High School, as well as in other New Jersey public schools, are required to maintain regular attendance throughout the school year.  Attendance records are frequently required by colleges, employers, and transferring schools. 

Following is a complete explanation of our attendance regulations.

The following regulations have been developed to discourage the practice of cutting class, tardiness, and truancy and to prevent excessive absenteeism in the high school.

Tardiness

Tardy is defined as entering a class after the indicated starting time up to fifteen (15) minutes without a pass.  More than fifteen (15) minutes without a pass will count as truancy.

• Three tardies to first period ONLY will result in one absence. This absence will count towards loss of credit. Two detentions will assigned for every three tardies.
• Three tardies to all other periods, will result in one truancy/cut. Students will be assigned 2 central detentions each time they accumulate a truancy. Two truancies/cuts to a class will result in loss of credit without opportunity for appeal.

The only acceptable excuses for being tardy are administrative removal from class, guidance appointments initiated by the guidance counselors and not the student, emergencies that require the nurse’s attention as determined by the school nurse, and situations requiring administrative attention as determined by an administrator.

 

Types of Absences

Excused: Will not count toward loss of credit. Excused absences include: religious holidays as prescribed by the State Department of Education, school sponsored activities, college visitations (limited to 3, documentation must be provided from the educational institution), Take Your Child to Work Day (documentation must be provided by the workplace), school suspensions mandated by the administration, and administrative removal from class.

 

Verified: Counts towards loss of credit, however verified absences have been confirmed by a parent. For an absence to be considered “verified”, a note or phone call from a parent or doctor must be presented by the third day after the student returns to school.  The label “verified” simply guarantees that all work missed by absences may be made up for credit.

Verified absences from school include, but are not limited to the following:

1. Illness and injury
2. Personal and family vacations/trips (are strongly discouraged)
3. Family emergencies
4. Medical and dental exams and treatment.  These are not to be excused for a full day.
5. Personal and family needs, including drivers’ tests

 

Unverified/Truant: Counts towards loss of credit, however a parent has not confirmed the absence with the attendance office.  All unverified absences will count toward truancy.

 

The only absences which will not count toward loss of credit are: religious holidays as prescribed by the State Department of Education, school sponsored activities, college visitations (limited to 3) school suspensions mandated by the administration, and administrative removal from class.

 

Medical Absences

Students who are absent from school due to medical reasons should follow the following procedure:

• Parent/Guardian should call the attendance office to verify the absence.
• While ill, should the student visit a medical professional, they should obtain documentation of the visit and submit this to the attendance office upon return to school.
• Please note:  Medical absences, even those with doctor’s verification, still count towards loss of credit. Extended consecutive medical absences that can be verified by a doctor’s note may be reduced to one day per the attendance policy. For example, if a student is out for 5 days with the flu and visits the doctor, upon receipt of the doctor’s note, Day 1 will count towards loss of credit, while Days 2-5 are medically excused (not counting towards loss of credit).

Extended consecutive absences that can be verified by a doctor’s note may be reduced to one day per the attendance policy.

 

This policy is not intended to remove credit from those students who have a chronic and/or serious medical problem.  For these students, we request that parents contact their child’s guidance counselor or school nurse early in the year in order that proper arrangements can be made to provide maximum assistance in the education of these students.

Students on non-credit status may not participate in any extracurricular activities or interscholastic athletics.

Thank you for your cooperation.