School, Absence, And Court (Ashton Garcia, 2nd)

Recently, a mother was concerned about excused and unexcused absences her son had. She wasn't upset with her son, but the school since he was now requied to go to court. The son was not notified he had missed too much school until he was told he had to go to court. What made the sitauation even worse was that he had gone to a funeral for his 5 year old cousin wo recently drowned in an ocean before he revived the notification, so now he was even more over the limit for absences. Unfortunately, the school would not accept the "excuse" because a cousin is not immediate family. So, to the school, grieving of a friend or certain time of family member isn't good enough. This is what concerned the mother, and she is doing everything she can to change that.

A friend of mine passed away last month, and I was debating whether or not to go to his funeral FOR THIS EXACT REASON. I was literally debating what was more important- an unexcused absences, or my friend's funeral. And I think this is a huge problem. School has set very limited and strict rules that force kids to chose school over what's really more important. For kids who are mentally ill, whether it's amxiety or something more extreme such as OCD or schizophrenia, it's unexcused if they have to miss a day because of some sort of attacks they may have. If someone is much too depressed or upset to go to school, that's also unacceptable and these are seen as unnecessary reasons and unexcusable actions. However, when the death of a loved one is ruled as not excused, yet another thing wrong the school system. Thankfully, I was able to go to the funeral (which was very wonderful), and got an excused absence. Not every school does this, obviously. And it causes children to choose school over what is much more mentally and emotionally (and maybe even physically) important. School is already very hard to go to for 9 months a year, and it is quite honestly irrational to expect a child to attend school without missing 5 or 10 days in those 9 months. What can we do to change that? The school system has to stop with such cruel and exaggerated punishment. If they just skipped because they wanted to or because they just didn't feel like going for no reason exactly, then I do accept the consequences for that. But I do feel like the system needs to further understand why people do need to leave or miss school on certain days, and need to further understand what is honestly "excusable" and "what isn't".