Attendance

Dear Parents and Guardians: 

It is the goal of SST Schools to keep an accurate record of your student’s attendance as required by the State of Texas. In order to do this, we need your support and cooperation.  Below you will find information on our attendance policy, but we ask that you please refer to the SST Student & Parent Handbook 2023-2024 for detailed information regarding attendance. 

ABSENCES: 

Please call your campus attendance clerk as early as possible if your student is not going to be attending school that day.  You may leave a message on our voicemail with your student’s name, grade, reason for absence, and your name and telephone number.  Your student will also need to bring in an excuse note to the attendance office upon return to school. 

WRITTEN NOTES—EXCUSED ABSENCES: 

The Attendance Office must receive WRITTEN notes or doctor’s notes for All ABSENCES.   Please ensure that you or your student delivers this note directly to the school Attendance Clerk.   Any notes received after the 3rd day will be processed as a “late note” and the absence will be considered as an unexcused absence. The notes must be signed by a parent/guardian or doctor and brought to the Attendance Clerk explaining why he/she was absent.  A hand written note from the parent does not automatically excused the student’s absence(s).  With the parent note, it is at the Principal’s discretion to excuse or not excuse the absence.   

LEAVING EARLY: 

If your student needs to leave the campus early, the parent/guardian must visit the Front Office to sign the student out (page 10 of handbook) If the student will be visiting a medical provider, please provide the medical note to the Front Office upon return.   

ATTENDANCE INFORMATION: 

SST will enforce the Texas compulsory attendance laws as follows:  

Phone calls will be placed to parents or guardians notifying them when a student has been marked as absent. It is the parent’s or guardian’s responsibility to ensure that he/she provides current and up to date contact information to the school.  

Students have 3 days to provide a note of excuse upon their return to school. Please read Student/Parent Handbook page 8 regarding the list of excused and unexcused absences.  

All students will be issued a warning notice when attendance records reflect that the student has absences without an excuse on three days or parts of days in a four week period or five or more days or parts of days during the school year. 

After a student has five or more days or parts of days during the school year, parents – and students, if older than 12 – will be required to attend the School’s Truancy Prevention Measures (TPM).  The TPM is an intervention program offered to parents and students as a preventative measure to intervene: 1) before students receive a referral to truancy court; and 2) to educate parents or guardians and students who are experiencing truancy problems about the consequences associated with unexcused absences.  

If a student fails to attend school without an excuse on 10 or more days or parts of days within a six-month period in the same school year and those absences have been verified by the campus as unexcused, students 12 and older may be referred to the prosecutor of the truancy court. At this point, the court could also file a criminal complaint against parents who contribute to the nonattendance of their child, regardless of their child’s age.  

To receive credit in a class, a student must attend at least 90% of the days the class is offered. These include both excused and unexcused absences.  If a student misses more than the allowable number of days, he or she may not be promoted to the next grade level due to the loss of the class credit. 

TARDY POLICY:

SST policy for tardies is broken down into two sections:  consequences for students who are tardy to school and consequences for students who are tardy to class.  See page 9-10 in the handbook for detailed information.   

Please refer to the SST Student/Parent Handbook for additional information, or contact your campus Dean of Students. We encourage our students to attend school on a regular basis to achieve academic success.