This year when senior Alexis Guynn first heard about the new attendance policy she didn’t think much about it. But when principal Brett Crousore announced that along with the tighter attendance policy, seniors will also be able to skip a final, Guynn’s opinion did a 180 degree change.
“I think it’s fabulous. It’s great especially for seniors who have a lot to worry about like applying for college and meeting deadlines. Skip a final will definitely come in handy,” Guynn said.
The new attendance policy and the end of the semester ‘Skip a final’ has been placed due to statewide changes that concerns attendance. Administration aims on raising attendance through incentives and raising awareness of the importance of attendance.
“LC did something along the same lines last year. Other schools do it. We wanted to do something to encourage, to give students an incentive to come to school. We know that if students come to school, they’re more likely to do better academically,” assistant principal Ruben DeLuna said.
Guynn already attends school regularly and sees the skip a final policy as more of a bonus than an incentive to come to school. She advises students that don’t regularly attend school to start.
“I think attendance is important anyway. I just think that this is a nice incentive. You should come to school regardless if you can skip a final or not, just so you can learn. This is why you’re here,” Guynn said.
With the new attendance policy, students are only allowed to have a total of five and a half unexcused absences in order to skip a final. The state set the minimum percentage that schools must have of attendance at 97 percent in order to receive an A.
“It was suppose to be 95 percent percentage rate, now it’s 97 percent. Students need to be in school for 174.5 days to receive an A,” Crousore said.
The new attendance policy was placed due to a new federal legislation which is called Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which had replaced the former bill, No Child Left Behind. With the new bill, attendance now counts for 10 percent of a school’s letter grade and the rest is judged on graduation rate, ISTEP, College and Career Readiness and World-class Instructional Design and Assessment (WIDA).
“ESSA requires that states identify ‘multiple measures’ for school letter grades instead of using only standardized test scores to measure the quality of a school,” Troy Knoderer, Director of Curriculum and Instructional Programs, said.

In order to meet all of these standards, LN and other schools in the district are adapting new methods to assist and encourage students to regularly attend school. While LN is following LC’s method through skip a final, the elementary schools have come up with their own system to raise attendance.
“All schools in Lawrence continue to emphasize attendance as critical to student achievement. Some schools are developing honors and awards around student attendance similar to what they do for academics. In addition, each school is committed to working with families to identify reasons that students may have an attendance issue and help problem-solve with the family so that school attendance can be improved,” Knoderer said.
Skip a final is not the only adjustment LN made to improve attendance. They have also repurposed study hall to encourage students to stay in study hall. Instead of just being a free block, administration has renamed it College and Career Readiness (CCR) and hopes to educate and prepare students for applying to colleges.
“It’s no grade, no credit attached. So I thought, let’s incentivize it by calling it College and Career Readiness period. Let’s start having Miss Anderson begin to really work with kids during CCR block. Have time during the day that really makes that class meaningful and then give kids time to study. Also making them aware that it may not impact you, but it does impact our community, our school grade,” Crousore said.
As of now, skip a final only extends to the senior class but administration is considering allowing other classes once they see if it makes an impact on attendance for the senior class. DeLuna believes that they will later need to “find ways to encourage all students across the grade levels”.
Unlike DeLuna, senior Jonathan Garcia disagrees and believes that this should just be limited to seniors. He views it as a privilege that should only be for the senior class due to their seniority.
“I feel like it should only be for seniors because it’s an important year, it’s your last year and if you slack off then there’s a possibility that you’ll probably be getting expelled or suspended for skipping class. If you have like a good reason not to skip class, like this one, it should just be for seniors,” Garcia said.
Like Garcia, senior Devon Taylor also believes that it should be limited to the student population. But unlike Garcia, she is open to the idea of allowing juniors to also be allowed to skip a final.
“I think it should be just juniors that are taking the AP test, because taking an AP test and a finale can be difficult because I did it last year and I didn’t like it at all. So I feel like it should be juniors taking an AP test and seniors,” Taylor said.
As of now, details of how to skip a final will be arranged are still being determined.
“This is about creating a school in a culture around here that kids want to come to school, want to go to class,” Crousore said.