Dropping a course due to chronic absenteeism
If a student misses more than 18 periods of a class face to face, then will need to be dropped from the class to meet Carnegie Unit expectations. Here are calculations:
To earn a Carnegie Unit in a semester, students need to complete 3,600 minutes of instruction per course.
To avoid being classified as chronically absent, students must be present for at least 80% of those instructional minutes. That means students must attend a minimum of 2,880 minutes in each class.
At SCC, our semester includes approximately 3,652 instructional minutes per class (based on 44-minute periods).
So, to calculate how many minutes a student can miss and still meet the 80% attendance threshold:
3,652 total minutes – 2,880 required minutes = 772 minutes that can be missed.
772 minutes ÷ 44-minute periods = about 18 class periods maximum that can be missed before falling below 80% attendance.
Questions or problems regarding this web site should be directed to your high school counselor.