Dear Parents/ Guardians,
Recently Ohio law on how school districts record and monitor student absences were changed from days to hours. Foxfire School has worked diligently to align its policies and procedures to the changes in law and meet compliance standards set forth by the Ohio Department of Education. This brochure contains information about the new attendance procedures we are required to follow. Please review and ensure you understand the changes as they are critical to you and your child. The biggest change is the mandated requirement to automatically withdraw a student from a community school once they reach 72 hours (approximately 12 days) in a school year.
*******PLEASE REVIEW HOUSE Bill 216 Effective November 2, 2018
*******Automatic withdrawal of community school students
House Bill 216- The bill changes the current law requirement to automatically withdraw a community school student after failure to participate in a certain number of consecutive hours of learning opportunities, by lowering the number of hours from 105 to 72.
*** This means if your child misses 72 unexcused hours of school we must automatically withdraw your student from Foxfire Schools.
The goal of Foxfire Schools’ attendance policy is that no student shall miss days of school without a legitimate excuse. A significant correlation exists between school attendance and academic and lifelong success. To ensure that our students achieve that success, Foxfire Schools works with parents, guardians, families, and students to intervene and resolve truancy and unexcused absences so that students subject to compulsory education consistently attend school when school is in session. As a solution to resolving the issues causing truancy, parents may be required to attend an educational and/or truancy prevention program as warranted by the facts and circumstances of the situation.
The development and implementation of truancy intervention strategies to address attendance and truancy is critical to ensure all of our students meet this requirement. These strategies will include, but are not limited to providing a truancy intervention plan for any student that is excessively absent from school without a legitimate excuse, counseling for habitually truant students, requesting or requiring parents to attend parental involvement programs and/or truancy prevention mediation programs, notification to the registrar of motor vehicles, involvement with juvenile court alternatives to adjudication, and taking legal action to address truancy.