Monday, December 03, 2007

Extracurricular activities

I have a question type of post tonight.

As you may know by now Kelsey is a member of the school woman's choir. Once or twice a month the choir director has mandatory evening practices. If the students do not attend he knocks their grade down, with out exception. Kelsey missed a practice when Natalie had her appendix taken out, and a practice when she was video taping for the football team before we were notified that these practices were mandatory.

Jerry says that if the band director is going to say that they are mandatory practices, that the school has to provide transportation to and from. I am not sure about that part, but I am not comfortable with the grades being knocked down when the family can not get the child to the practice.

So the question I pose to you all tonight, is should we as parents question the mandatory practices with the grades being knocked down?

1 comment:

Kate said...

Hmm. I was in chorus and band in high school, and I know the expectation was that we would attend concerts or our grades would be knocked down, but practices were always within school hours or immediately afterward.

For marching band, the practices were in the evenings or weekends, and you were expected to attend - but it wasn't a course you took for a grade, so it never came up.

I think it should be like any other high school course - if it's for a grade, then there has to be a syllabus, and on the syllabus there has to be a clear attendance policy. And like for any other course, there has to be the opportunity for excused absences, because, um.... life happens.