With only three business days until application deadline(Tuesday, 9/19), the Deer Valley Unified District is making a public plea for parents to serve on a promotion/retention committee, for grades K - 8, having published a quite difficult-to-spot article in the Friday, 9/15/06 edition of the Arizona Repulsive newspaper.  Amazing - this district has been around for approximately a half -century, and is just now getting around to figuring out what constitutes successful promotion requirements.

     Well, they could start with mandated attendance!  Some schools have, for all practical purposes, ignored State attendance laws, and allow students to be truant, not persuing the legal processes for prevention!  Others ignore absences, when they affect high school credit attainment.  ARS laws state that five(5) unexcused absences, or eighteen(18) absences - excused or unexcused - constitute truancy.  For high school students, missing twelve(12) classes, in any one(1) semester, should result in loss of credit for that class.  While there may be allowable exceptions for each of these circumstances, the intent of the law is clear that students are to attend classes, and that schools have the power and the authority to effect such appropriate attendance.  Citations should be issued - not letters or phone calls of notification to parents.  Action/prevention must be taken immediately - not in March/April, when timelines make successful outcomes virtually impossible. 

     And please tell me - how can little Sharon be allowed to maintain passing grades, when she has more than thirty absences(sometimes more than forty or fifty), while little Nick, who attends daily, may struggle to maintain a 'C' average?  Bad example - now someone(Nick's attorney) will demand giving little Nick all A's, just for attending!

     Some State legislators would like to increase the dropout age to 18, from 16.  With all of the money now being spent on early childhood educational programs - including voluntary all-day kindergarten - why not lower the mandatory starting age to 6, from 8?  You didn't know that it was 8?  Yes!  Students are not mandated to attend public school until the age of 8, in Arizona.

     The Peoria Unified governing board has adopted new language, more specifically defining bullying and its punishment.  The new language specifically states that bullying behaviors include "pushing, tripping, pranks, physical violence, verbal taunts, name-calling, threats, extortion, theft of personal property, damaging personal property, ostracism or cyber-bullying."  They had better amend the language to include the disclaimer that bullying "includes, but is not limited to, the above-mentioned acts," before an attorney proclaims that his client did not commit an act that was on the list - and gets him off-the-hook on that technicality!