You’ve been excited about the school dance for the past week. However, when you walk up to the table to get your ticket, they deny you and say your attendance is too low. It doesn’t feel like you’ve missed that many days, but now you’re told that that’s final for the entire year. 

   Missing just a few days of school can be harmful to your attendance. There should be a way to fix this so that we as students don’t feel so helpless.

   When you’re missing assignments, our school offers many opportunities for you to catch up. Some classes allow you to submit your work late for at least a part of a grade, and classes offer extended project deadlines if you’ve been sick. There’s also tutoring after school that is offered in the library.

   We have all of these opportunities to make up our grades, but it seems like our attendance is impossible to bounce back from. If the school promotes having such high attendance, why don’t they give us any options to fix it?

    Some people don’t care about their attendance, but there are a lot of things you miss out on if you don’t keep up at least a 90 percent rate attendance. You can’t go to school dances if your attendance doesn’t reach this standard. You also can’t participate in Kickapoo University or the A+ program our school offers if you don’t keep up a 95 percent attendance rate.

   It takes about 20 missed days of school to drop down to a 90 percent attendance for the school year. Your overall attendance is a culmination of all four years, so if you want to get into all of those special programs mentioned before, you better manage those days wisely.

   To combat that, there should be a program that allows students to recover their attendance. It would be something you’d sign up for, not something mandated. Some high schools in Missouri, such as Grandview, offer classes for you to take after school where you do busy work or your own homework in order to recover that lost time. 

   However, there is also volunteering to consider. If you take some of the volunteerism opportunities that the counselors put out, you should be able to earn back a small percentage of your attendance. 

   According to the Children’s Medical Doctor’s website, including volunteer work in a possible attendance recovery program would help encourage teenagers to engage more within their community and learn valuable life skills. 

   Of course, there are issues when it comes to truancy. Students may be trying to get into these programs to recover the days they’ve skipped, rather than attending actual school.

   Unfortunately, there are going to be some people who take advantage of this. But if we run a background check on a student’s attendance and see if they have a habit of skipping, showing up late, and being caught with truancy on their attendance, then we can limit who can participate.

   I’ve struggled with attendance quite a bit, and I’m only halfway through high school. I can honestly say that it’s very stressful, especially when I’m told it’s final and I can’t make those days up. 

   Sometimes I’ve jeopardized my own health by coming to school only partially recovering from being sick, which of course only worsens my illness.

   It’s unfair that you don’t get a second chance to be better. Especially considering that half of the time, we’re sick and trying to recover and keep others safe. We might mess up, but we at least deserve a chance to make it up.