GVC this year has started a new attendance policy where if you have 4 absences, you get a call home to your parents or guardians from your teachers. 8 absences is a phone call from teachers and a letter in the mail. 12 absences is a automatic course failure, or a attendance contract. This policy sounds wonderful if it didn't include verified absences. These are when your parents or guardians call the school to tell them that you won't be in for part or all of that day.

It makes sense to more severely punish students who skip their classes for unknown reasons. But to punish people who genuinely need more time off school than others is controlling, tyrannical, and unfair. They claim to have made this policy to solve the attendance issue, and to put an end to students calling in and verifying for eachother. While yes, this policy would help with this problem, there's better options that will not only fix attendance issues, but not hinder and fail people who genuinely need time off.

My solution would be to keep the 4 8 12 system for only unverified students. This way skippers will still be punished and risk failing for being irresponsible. For the "fake verifications", I would solve it by having some sort of two factor authentication for the parents to verify that they are in fact the parent or guardian of the child they're verifying. The way I see two factor authentication working for GVC verification is being able to verify your child through an online form, where a staff at the school would then go in and mark them verified for their classes. This form would have a sms confirmation code only sent to one or both of the parent's phoen numbers by an automated call or text. They then put that code into the form and confirm they are the parent of that child and that their child won't be in class.

GVC and their staff is always preaching that they build their school on trust. But then at the same time; punish students for being responsible and calling to verify.

End the 4 8 12 policy.