Excusing an Absence

Excusing an Absence

Under California state law, the school may excuse absences with valid reason in accordance with Education Code Section 48205.

To excused an absence, parents/guardians have 30 days to report the absence by doing one of the following:


  1. Call the MVH Attendance Technician’s office at (619) 628-5715.  If no one answers, please leave a voicemail message with the student’s name, date of birth, reason for the absence, and date(s) to excuse.



  2. Email the Attendance Technician at david.delrio@sweetwaterschools.org and attach all relevant documents that would excuse the date(s) in question.


    Such documents must indicate exact dates that were missed and must originate from a doctor, dentist, eye doctor, court, etc.


    Please message the attendance technician from your own email address that you provided as a parent/guardian contact to help us verify the identity of the sender.

Excessive Excused Absences

Following district policy, accumulating more than 14 excused absences is considered excessive.  Excessive absences may lead to your student being placed on an attendance contract.

Excused absences count toward chronic absenteeism.  Excusing absences does not clear or erase them from the record.

Saturday School is the only means of clearing absences from the attendance record to reduce individual student absence totals.

Saturday School

Absences that are cleared by attending Saturday School…

  • Do not count as absences on individual student attendance records.
  • Reduce individual student absence totals.
  • Count as days present in school, due to the recovery of academic time.
  • Help repair excessive absenteeism, instead of contributing negatively to it.
  • Help improve individual student attendance records.

Clearing absences in Saturday School is based on the principle that academic time lost due to absences can be recovered on Saturdays.  One four-hour session in Saturday School recovers one full-day absence or 6 absent periods.

Please direct your Saturday School questions to the Attendance Coordinator’s office at (619) 628-5864.

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