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New Mexico’s attendance law, the Attendance for Success Act, does not have special considerations for students with severe medical conditions or other disabilities. 

New Mexico’s attendance law needs to be amended to provide special consideration for absences due to severe medical conditions.

Students should be in school. Attendance is important. But, for kids with severe and chronic medical conditions, it’s not a choice - If it were, they’d probably choose school! The attendance law in New Mexico should be changed so families & students aren’t penalized for absences beyond their control.

This law already has special consideration for: Pregnant & parenting students; Extracurricular activities; Religious instruction; and Tribal obligations.

Even when a student has accommodations planned with the school through an IEP or Section 504 plan, provides documentation, maintains good communication with the school, and all absences are excused, the same tiered intervention framework applies. Under this framework, families are sent notifications warning of potential CYFD referral when absences reach chronic level. In fact, some families have been referred to CYFD as a result of how the law is written. Absences are not reduced from this administrative-burdening activity, as the conditions and their treatment persist.

The intent of the law is to know who is absent and the root cause(s), for schools to meet those root causes with resources or support, in order to ultimately reduce absences. This intent is good, but is not achieved for severe medical conditions situations under the current law and framework approach. This is only serving to unfairly penalize these students and their families.

National attendance research and policy guidance from Attendance Works and others recommends the IEP and Section 504 plan processes as the appropriate way to address absences for these students, to ensure case-by-case consideration and protection of rights.

Ideally, these students wouldn’t need to miss school. But, for severe medical conditions, absences are often unavoidable.

Please consider:

Impacted students may have reasonable accommodations for:

• Care of chronic conditions;
• Ongoing medical appointments;
• Medications with severe side-effects or immunosuppressive;
• Lack of qualified medical professionals at school for care of exacerbated conditions like asthma;
• Hospitalization;
• Surgery; etc.

Compounding missed school time for New Mexico students are other factors including:

• Specialist providers only located in Albuquerque or outside New Mexico;
• Longer travel time for families beyond Albuquerque metro;
• Lack of provider capacity means cannot select appointment times to align with school schedule;
• Provider hours coincide with school hours.

Real, negative impacts to students and their families have included:

• Added stress in already challenging circumstances;
• Fear of CYFD when trying to care for a sick child;
• Fear of speaking up about the attendance law after being warned of potential CYFD involvement;
• Accommodations in IEP or Section 504 plans regarding attendance being overridden;
• Broken trust between families and schools;
• Sense of wasting time to develop IEP or Section 504 plans with schools despite legal rights;
• Fear of seeking recommended care for child if it will impact attendance.

Please consider signing this petition to show your agreement with:

New Mexico’s attendance law needs to be amended to provide special consideration for absences due to severe medical conditions.

Thank you!