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ELKINS -- Randolph County Schools Superintendent Debbie Schmidlen discussed a change that has been made to the county's attendance policy during this week's Board of Education meeting.
Attendance was one of the main topics of conversation during a BOE meeting in September, as several parents of students spoke about the issue during the public comment section of the meeting.
As a result, the BOE voted to send the attendance policy out for a 30-day comment period to allow the public to provide feedback on the policy.
"As you know, the attendance policy has been a bit of a topic," Schimidlen told the board members at this week's meeting. "It's 30-day comment time has expired and we did receive three comments."
Schmidlen said the comments were reviewed by the secondary curriculum team, which decided to add one item under exemptions.
"Right now, students may be exempt if there is a school-sponsored activity, failure of a bus to run, or mandatory military duty for those who are actively in the armed services," Schmidlen said. "And now we have added the ability for juniors and seniors to have two college visits per year -- two days."
The new exemption rule for students visiting colleges went into effect at the start of the second nine weeks, which began Wednesday.
"If a student wants to burn both of those days on one visit, they can do that," Schmidlen said. "Upon return to school, students must provide documentation from a college, university or technical school that identifies the day in which the visit took place. They have to have that documentation in order for the day to be exempt, though."
Schmidlen said the exempt days will be for the visit days only, and do not include any travel time which may occur when a student takes a longer trip to a school out of the area.
During the attendance discussion, the superintendent also explained to the board members some of the differences between attendance policy and attendance guidelines.
"We have our attendance policy and those require board approval," she said. "And then we have administrative guidelines as well, which includes end-of-course exams and grading for secondary schools. I feel like sometimes there is a little bit of confusion, not on your part, but just in general. People just don't really understand that administrative guidelines may have different content than county policy."
During a September BOE meeting, a parent criticized the school system's attendance policy, saying it did not take into account students who are ill for extended periods, such as students suffering from COVID-19.
Randolph County BOE meetings are held on the first and third Tuesday of each month at 5:30 p.m.