School Success Begins with Attendance Parents use many different strategies to help their children be successful at school. One of the easiest and best actions parents can take to maximize school success is to make sure your student is in school, on time, every day. Simply put, it is very difficult for any child to keep up with schoolwork when he or she misses or is late to school on a regular basis. In the last few weeks, tardiness has increased greatly here at Boulevard. This causes students to miss out on important instruction time at the start of the day. Each day, teachers cover important information, learning strategies, and skills students must know and understand in order to improve, progress, and achieve.

Please remember, very few excuses justify an absence from school. There may be good reasons for a child to be absent from school, but they are few and far between. If your child is ill or if there is a dire family emergency, then an absence from school is justifiable. However, while critical events over which you have no control may justify an absence, events that you can control should be scheduled around—not during—school. Make school your child’s first priority. A child’s education is much too important to jeopardize by pulling him or her from school for appointments that could be scheduled after hours.

It is just as important to make sure your child is on time daily. It would help us very much if you make sure your child gets to school on time—or, better yet, early. Remember, if your child arrives ten minutes late each day, he or she will have missed roughly four and a half days of school by the end of the school year. Your child’s teacher understands better than anyone that every minute on instructional time counts. That’s why he or she is working to get lessons off to a good start as soon as the day starts. When a child comes in late, not only has he or she missed valuable instructional time, but the child will also likely disrupt the flow of the lesson for others as he or she gets situated.

Please help us by showing your commitment to your child’s education. Getting your child to school every day, prepared and on time, demonstrates your commitment to your child’s academic success. Please help us to make our students as successful as possible.

Mr. Lawrence Swoope, Principal
Boulevard Elementary School

Boulevard Broadcaster Newsletter - October 2006