Having to finish all classwork while out sick - Page 2

[Annie Mac]

Originally Posted by alegna 

Public schools receive funds based on attendance.  If children are out then they don't get the $$ for those kids from those days.

-Angela

Really??? Here, they get funds based on registration numbers, not daily attendance numbers. Wow. The cost of administering and keeping track of such a method of funding probably outweighs any possible savings (savings from the gov't's point of view, that is). I had no idea. Again, wow.

[limabean]

Originally Posted by Annie Mac 

Really??? Here, they get funds based on registration numbers, not daily attendance numbers. Wow. The cost of administering and keeping track of such a method of funding probably outweighs any possible savings (savings from the gov't's point of view, that is). I had no idea. Again, wow.

Yes, I meant federal funds for attendance at public schools. They hate it when you "play hooky" here, because they lose money for each empty classroom seat each day. 

[happysmileylady]

Actually, the teaching was basically giving your son  extra days to do the work.  He was gone 4 days-Tues, Wed, Thurs, and Friday, right?  So, if he shows up on Monday, gets all the make up work on Monday, then he has Monday, Tues, Wed, and Thurs to do it, it has to be in on Friday.

This way, your child now has Saturday and Sunday to do the work also.  I would be thrilled if a teacher took the initiative to send the work home in advance like that, instead of waiting until the child returns, which is how most teachers that I have had experience (including when I myself was teaching) with operate.

As to why schools get antsy that kids are out, it really is more about the students learning and much less about financials.  Attendance is one of the biggest indicators of student performance-in most cases, kids to go to school more days do better in school.  As another poster mentioned, lessons are often built upon each other.  So, when teaching, for example, sentence structure in grammer, day one's lesson might be on subjects, day two's on predicates, etc etc. 

[mar123]

Schools do get funding for each student, but those numbers are not counted year round every day, etc. For us, from the start of school until Oct 1, we are manic about attendance and making sure every kid is here. We have to submit those numbers and our funding is based on that. Sometimes we can hire new teachers after Oct 1 if our numbers are high enough. Many schools are facing new attendance laws due to the opportunity for federal education money, such as "race to the top." Our state now says a child can only miss 5 days in one semester or they fail the course. There is a limit of 3 excused absences. If a child has a lengthy illness, he has to apply for a special waiver. It is a PITA. But it comes from higher ups, not the people in the trenches, trust me. We have so many kids coming to school sick now, which just makes everything spread like wildfire.

[mar123]

I meant to add, there are very little federal funds for education. It is state money, hence the reason schools differ so much from state to state. The federal funding is mostly for special education services, which are mandated by the federal government. There are some federal funding opportunities out there but the hoops you have to jump through to get them are unreal.

And I wanted to clarify: Schools do NOT get X number of dollars per student per day. It is an overall number set by the number of students in the school from day day 1-day X (depends on your state). Actually, the district gets the money, and they parcell it out from there. The average ranges per student. In My state is about 8K per student. In WI it is 10K (saw it on the news, LOL). But nowhere near that much makes it to the classroom. But that is a story for another day.

[CarrieMF]

Originally Posted by sapphire_chan 

I don't think the OP is paying any money. A lot of public school systems get their funding apportioned based on student man-hours. So they can get tetchy about a kid missing X hours of time in school. And the districts don't pay any attention to if a child is at home doing the work or anything.

Depends on the district. Here they get their funding based on the number of kids enrolled on a certain date(used to be Oct 30, not sure if it's the same date or not).  It is in the first 2-3 months of school though.   Attendance after that has nothing to do with their funding.  They get extra funding after IF they have special needs kids come into their school.

[One_Girl]

I suggest e-mailing the teacher and telling her that your son is too ill to do class work right now.  Maybe ask if she can boil down the work to a few brief worksheets that are geared towards the essential knowledge for the lessons being missed so he can keep up with the class when he is back in school and tell her you will try to get him to do those if he has any periods of time when he isn't too drained.  Make it clear that if that isn't an option that he will have to do his catching up once he is better because he is too sick right now.  Most of the teacher's in our area focus on essential learning, especially when a child is sick, so that hasn't been a huge issue here.  We did have one teacher who sent home a bunch of stuff that I later threw away.  They don't assign grades and they don't hold kids back here so I wasn't concerned about her missing really boring worksheets with skills on them she could already do.  Her teacher never asked about it. 

[limabean]

(OP here.) Thanks so much for all your replies. I have to redeem the poor teacher here -- I made some bad assumptions. When I initially started this thread, she had only sent home 1 day's worth of classwork, and I knew she planned to send more home today and leapt to the conclusion that she'd be sending home classwork for all 3 of the remaining days. But I got the packet today, and it only contains Friday's classwork. 

So I think that's reasonable, and we can definitely finish that by the end of next week. I'm so glad that she has reasonable expectations, and I've learned a lesson not to leap to judgment before I have all the facts! 

Oh, and DS doesn't have pneumonia and actually his fever finally seems to have broken, so I think we'll get back on track pretty soon here. 

[HollyBearsMom]

So glad its not pneumonia!!! Hope he feels better soon.

[limabean]

Originally Posted by limabean 

(OP here.) Thanks so much for all your replies. I have to redeem the poor teacher here -- I made some bad assumptions. When I initially started this thread, she had only sent home 1 day's worth of classwork, and I knew she planned to send more home today and leapt to the conclusion that she'd be sending home classwork for all 3 of the remaining days. But I got the packet today, and it only contains Friday's classwork. 

So I think that's reasonable, and we can definitely finish that by the end of next week. I'm so glad that she has reasonable expectations, and I've learned a lesson not to leap to judgment before I have all the facts! 

One more update, from last week -- I spoke too soon! The teacher did end up sending home packets for the other 2 days, so we're having to complete all classwork he missed while he was out. We're still working on it -- I'm having him to 2 pages per night in addition to his regular homework, and it'll take however long it takes.