Attendance Line: 403-777-6730 ext. 1

Student Attendance

To ensure each child's safety, we ask your co-operation in reporting your child's absences or late arrivals to the office. Please phone the school to record an absence or late prior to 8:30 AM, or prior to 12:45 PM. Calls are taken by the voice mail system, which provides 24-hour and 7-days-a-week service.

If a child is absent when attendance is taken, and we have not heard from the parents the school must call your home and work numbers to check on your child’s absence. It saves our staff considerable time when you initiate the call to report a student absence. If you know how long your child will be away, please let us know and we will refrain from calling your home each day.

Absent Students

Please inform us when your child is going to be late or absent. When a student’s absence is “unexcused”, the office makes every effort to contact parents. We are obligated to report excessive unexcused absences to the attendance officer of the CBE.

Excused absences include:

• Illness, mental health condition or medical/dental appointment. If these are frequent or excessive you may want to request a medical note to excuse these absences.
• Family emergency, death or illness in the family
• Public Health quarantine
• Religious or cultural observance
• Court
• Extreme weather, transportation cancellations
• An absence directly related to homeless status
• Suspension from School
• Expulsion from a school with no permission to re-enroll

Unexcused absences include:

• Any absence from school for a day or a portion there of that does not meet the above criteria

Lates

Students are expected to be punctual as the amount of time missed adds up over the course of a year. If a child is late, they must FIRST check in at the office before attending class. Lates are noted on the attendance record for students. Students who are chronically late create additional work for the office. They cause disruption to classroom instruction and may miss important information. Students who are chronically late may be required to make up lost instructional time.

Messages

Generally speaking, children will not be given phone messages, as it is impossible for us to confirm the identity of the caller. Parents are requested to make these arrangements prior to their child coming to school and to have a back-up plan for unusual circumstances. However, in the case of a true emergency situation, the school will be pleased to be of assistance in any way possible.

Extended Trips

During the course of the school year, we sometimes have parents taking their child on trips varying in length from two weeks to several months. When this happens, please inform us as early as possible as we will have a form for you to sign. If your child is on an extended trip, we suggest the following: enroll your child in school if you are somewhere for a number of months, have your child keep a written journal of all events, spend time with your child reading, and spend a short time each day working on some mathematics practice.