Attendance

Empower Academy – Attendance

Creating a Culture of Community and Belonging

At Empower Academy, we believe that active, engaged attendance is crucial for success. Our goal is to have a positive culture of attendance while staff continuously work to remove barriers that keep students from attending. We do this by making sure that families are supported when challenges present themselves through communication, clarity, and consistency.

Core Beliefs

• Attendance is an early intervention for student academic success - regular attendance is a positive indicator for graduation
• Attendance is a shared responsibility - Students aren’t in this alone. The school community and families work together to build habits and remove barriers for success.
• Attendance is active - Students are essential in creating the culture of community through active participation in classroom and campus activities.

Attendance Expectations

• Students must attend 90% of class periods to earn credit at the end of each semester

This means

• If you are missing more than 10% of a course (unexcused) it may cause you to not obtain credit
• Classes have 90 instructional days per semester, which means students must attend at least 81 days.

90% Rule

Research has indicated that students who miss over 10% of class become chronically absent by federal guidelines which increases the risk of dropout

Absence Categories

• Excused (requires documentation) - Illness, medical/dental appointments, bereavement, family emergencies, court appointments, religious observances
• Unexcused - truancy, absences without guardian verification within 1 week of absence.
• School-Related - activities for clubs, athletics, and class field trips

Tardies

If students are more than 30 minutes late for a class without a verified reason, students will be marked absent for that period.