PROS: With the new attendance policy being enforced for the first time this spring, it has potential to bring positive change and benefits to everyone on the campus despite negative opinions towards it.

Although it will negatively affect a few, benefits will exist for the majority of the school. Attendance rates should rise and students will be rewarded for good attendance.

Many students look forward to senior year as they can now paint their parking spots. This will allow more creativity on campus, motivation to come to school more often, and will make parking easier.

Although it costs money, it should be worth it because it will be fun for many to have the freedom personalize their school life.

Distribution of the limited spots are done in a fair way involving number of absences. If a student has zero absences, then they would get first pick. Students with one absence will get second pick and so on.

All students, no matter the age, agree that finals are one of the most stressful times in high school. But with the new incentive, it provides a cushion of support to students with good attendance and grades.

All these benefits require a good attendance therefore, students will succeed will result better attendance rates as a school.

With these changes, students will be rewarded for good attendance and efforts. In the past, they were expected to work hard but treated the same as students who showed little motivation and care.

In general, attendance for students are not priorities for colleges when determining acceptances so for high schools to put a lot of pressure on it if it is not as relevant in the future seems odd.

However, there are negative changes that will come with it. The most disliked change is the idea that being sick will now be considered as an unexcused absence. Students do not control when they get sick and it is advised to not come to school so when their education is penalized, it is unfair. A student’s education should not be influenced based on sicknesses and attendance issues. It is insensitive to disregard student’s struggles and conflicts because sometimes, it is inevitable and a student may not be able to avoid it. The only excuse that  is allowed is school field trips.

Luckily, there are exceptions to this new policy.

If a student is gone for a long period of time due to a serious injury, sickness or an emergency, a student can still earn credit for the classes despite the fact that they missed 90 percent of it.

There are negative aspects to the new incentive policy but there are more favorable impacts involved.

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CONS:

The recent change to AISD’s absence policy sounds like a good way to keep students coming to class, but the incentives are not worth it for everyone.

Seniors for example, won’t get any of the incentives other than depending on what grade they get in the class they still have to show up for the final, but their final grade will not effect them.

They won’t get to participate in the other incentives like painting a personalized parking spot or getting an off period because they will be graduating and the other incentives won’t be going into effect until next school year.

Juniors, sophomores, and seniors will get to participate, but freshman will not be able to because they aren’t old enough to get their driver’s license and won’t have a car and I don’t think it will really work as well as they want it to.

I think there will be a lot of issues with personalized parking spots and students could potentially fight over parking spots and park in someone else’s spot.

I don’t think the school has really taken into consideration what consequences will look like and how they will be carried think that they should do something else as an incentive like maybe having food trucks come to the school for lunch or possibly letting students who have good attendance pick what lunch they have as a reward for good attendance.

I think that getting an off period could be an incentive although grades and attendance go hand and hand I think grades would be a better motivator.

But, if a student is failing one of their classes or barely passing I don’t think they should be allowed to have an off period because a lot of the time if the off period is sixth period they have both lunches and they go home and sleep or go to eat and they don’t do anything productive that could help their grades.

I think that is a waste of time that could be better spent improving their high school career.

The biggest incentive for me is the one that has to do with the final exam because not taking the final exam based on your grade and your attendance is an awesome incentive and every class can participate in it.

I think that other students may not feel the same way and they might need the final exam grade to help them pass the class, but they don’t want to take the exam.

Only wanting one of the incentives isn’t worth it, they should benefit all of the students in every class and they should be willing to fix it so that it benefits every student, in every situation.