In the last week, three families independently approached me for advice about school truancy letters regarding their children. What triggered them was that each family received a threatening letter from their respective schools about their children’s unexcused absences and the actions the school could take. As a parent, the first thing that comes to mind is social services, and just the thought of it is enough to make you panic.

I believe the timing of these letters coincided with the end of the year – schools likely completed their bookkeeping for the first half of the school year and sent a barrage of such letters to families with excessive absences.

Of course, these absences were for legitimate reasons – the children attended fencing competitions!

Having had four children competing in regional, national, and international competitions, I received a bunch of threatening and frankly very frightening truancy letters from our school (public high school). Eventually we managed to settle this with the school to the satisfaction of both our family and the school administration. While it seems quite obvious in retrospect, I want to share what worked so well for us.

My Initial Response (Don’t Do This)

The first couple of truancy letters, after reading them with shaking hands, I threw in the recycle bin. After all, I thought, if social services pound on my door they’ll find a quite functional (although sometimes hectic) family.

But after a while it became too annoying and worrisome to ignore. After all, truancy can be a civil or criminal offense and can potentially lead to fines or prosecution for parents and students.

So we scheduled a meeting with the school principal and counselor.

The Meeting That Changed Everything

The meeting was super friendly and eye-opening for us. Maybe for some other fencing families this sounds trivial, but it was revelatory for us.

Right off the bat we stated that our children are competitive fencers who regularly attend out-of-town competitions, which sometimes require 3-4 days off school (regional and national) and even a whole week for international travel. Moreover, sometimes there are two such competitions in a month, and sometimes even three! We were also puzzled how to qualify such absences as excused when the school code doesn’t include competition attendance as an excused absence category.

What should we do, we asked? Should we call in sick every time our child attends a competition? Such lies are not something we want to do or teach our children.

The Solution

To our relief, the school was super accommodating. The principal explained that these truancy letters are mostly aimed at addressing situations that can be really dangerous for students, such as bullying at school, substance abuse, or family issues, among others. This tracking is one of the school’s tools to handle such cases, especially if parents are unaware of them.

In our case, the principal said, this is different. Our students maintain good grades, submit all their homework, and actively participate in their classes when they aren’t traveling. So the solution is simple:

• We should call the attendance line and report an absence due to competition
• Our children should talk with their teachers ahead of time about their competition travel and arrange for homework assignments and tests
• Teachers will be accommodating with that
• And of course, students need to maintain their grades

Bottom line, the principal concluded: if all these requirements are met, we can calmly recycle future truancy letters without opening them.

You can’t miss the paradox: on one hand, schools love athletes, especially fencers, since they’re often among the school’s best students. Many are recruited and accepted to top colleges, which raises the school’s prestige. But on the other hand, there’s no institutionalized mechanism for student-athletes to get legitimate excused absences for competition attendance.

My Recommendation

Try to openly communicate with your school about your child’s competitions. Plan with the school ahead of time and have your student talk to their teachers about what they need to do to keep up with their requirements. I believe that such open dialogue will solve these issues. It did for us.

Don’t wait for the threatening letters to pile up. Be proactive. Schedule a meeting early in the school year if your child competes regularly. Establish the protocol once, and you won’t have to panic every time a truancy letter arrives.

Image by Alex Panoiu under CC BY 2.0 license