What is attendance?

At CKHS, like any other school, attendance is a critical part of the education process to ensure the students are successful in getting the education they need. However, having good attendance isn’t just important for success, there are laws, regulations and policies that require certain actions to be taken should a student have any issues with their attendance. 

There are a variety of absences that a student can have. Excused absence, late arrivals and early dismissals are a common occurrence for students who may be sick or have appointments during instructional time. These types of absences must be verified by a note or a phone call from the parent/guardian in order to be excused. 

Then there are unexcused absences. These occur when a student is absent and there is no reason provided for the absence. Having too many unexcused absences can lead to serious consequences.

When Ms. Patty Aflleje, Attendance Office Manager was asked if students being marked unverified multiple times was a problem her response was… “Oh, absolutely. We can do the Becca bill. It’s where we go to the courts. It’s a big documentation of paperwork. We get Mr. Chertok to sign off on it and include it for the Kitsap County Juvenile department. And then they will proceed into contacting parents and getting the kid to juvenile court and go through their process to try and get that kid to come to school. So it could cost them monetary fines.” 

If you’re thinking about cheating the system to avoid having an unexcused absence you might want to think again. Ms. Aflleje has been working attendance for 25 years and has heard it all.

“They have a friend. Call or they call themselves and try to disguise their voices. But you can kind of tell, I can tell a teenager voice on the phone versus a parent. Yeah. And then we have a lot of cell phones in the system that belong to [students] that are given to us when school starts. So we look at the cell phone and it’s usually the kids.”