Attendance Contracts

District policy allows for students to be placed on an attendance contracts for accumulating excessive absences.

  • An attendance contract is formal notice that the student has missed an excessive amount of school days/academic time.

  • Students placed on attendance contracts may only have their absences excused with documentation from a doctor.

  • A parent phone call cannot excuse the absences of a student placed on an attendance contract.

Types of Attendance Contracts

An Excessive Excused Absence Contract may be given to students with more than 14 excused absences.

A Pre-SARB Agreement may be given to students who have 6 or more unexcused full-day absences on their attendance record for the year.

A SARB Agreement is given by the district.  This is legal document that stays on student records until graduation, and follows students who transfer to other schools.  The SARB Agreement may be given to students who have 9 or more unexcused full-day absences on record and have already been placed on a Pre-SARB Agreement.

Choices Contract

To participate in school activities, Mar Vista High School students sign a Choices Contract and agree to its terms.  Students who violate the terms of this contract are placed on the Choices List and may be barred from certain activities.

The following attendance violations place students on the Choices List:

  1. Accumulating more than 10 unexcused tardies.
  2. Having 6 or more unexcused full-day absences.
  3. Having 7 or more excused full-day absences.
  4. A combination of 10 or more full-day absences counting both excused and unexcused ones.
  5. Accumulating 36 or more period absences.

Repairing Excessive Absenteeism

Fortunately, students can begin repairing their attendance records and avoid attendance issues by doing the following (in order of importance):

  1. Keep absences to a bare minimum.  Most absences should be for illness.

  2. Attend school regularly and on time.

  3. Attend all classes and stay the entire day.

  4. Use Saturday School to clear absences from the attendance record.

    • Absences cleared in Saturday School do not count as absences on the student’s attendance records.
    • Clearing absences on Saturdays reduces absence totals of individual students.
    • Saturday School cleared absences count as days present in school for individual students’ attendance rates.

Please direct questions regarding Saturday School and attendance contracts to the MVH Attendance Coordinator at (619) 628-5864.