Doctor's Notes

2 of 2 has been sick a lot this year. He is in kindergarten in public school and has missed so many days (15) that we, his parents or guardians, were called in for a meeting this morning.

I was expecting the principal, his teacher, and maybe the attendance czar from the school district. Instead, we faced the principal, all five kindergarten teachers, two student teachers, and the school counselor. The room was pretty crowded! But there was no attendance czar.

The optimist in me says that these kinds of meetings are necessary because some parents treat school as optional, allowing their kids to skip school for all manner of reasons. Or maybe the parents don't realize that their kids aren't going to school. So these meetings may be educational for the parents (e.g. whose kids are skipping without their knowledge) or necessary to keep the kids from falling behind academically, eventually dropping out and facing a life of one dead end job after another until they end up in prison.

The pessimist in me says that since public school funding is tied to attendance, the schools are cracking down because it hits their bottom line. They're only in it for the money.

The realist in me says that it is a combination of the two. Like it or not, money is needed to keep the school operating and excessive absences impact the schools' ability to perform their job for the other kids — the ones who do come. And for most kids, and most grades, attendance is critical to success.

But 2 of 2 is not most kids and kindergarten is not most grades. The primary goals of kindergarten are to get kids ready for first grade by making sure they can count, know their letters, and are at "pre-reading" level (whatever that is). 2 of 2 could count to 100 before school started, and can do basic arithmetic already. He is reading at nearly the 2nd grade level now and was recommended by his teacher for PACE (the school district's gifted program), to which he was accepted.

So academically, 2 of 2 is not just doing well, he's doing great.

And he really has been sick a lot this year. What am I supposed to do? Send him to school when he's sick so he can get other kids sick? Doesn't that turn 1 absence into many? Wouldn't that cost the district more money?

Well, it turns out that we learned something. There is a magic thing called a "doctor's note" which seems to mollify the school about absences. We've been sending our kids to this school for nearly 4 years (1 of 2 is in 3rd grade now) and have never heard of doctor's notes. The pediatrician has never offered us one. The teachers have never asked for one. We send in the required note explaining each absence when the child returns and it has always been good enough.

Of course, there is still the issue of illness which doesn't result in a doctor's visit. A large number of doctor's visits end with the doctor saying that it's a viral thing and it will just have to run its course. So we don't take our kids to the doctor unless they have certain symptoms or don't seem to be able to shake it off.

But we'll get the doctor to go back through their files and fax a summary to the school of how many times they saw 2 of 2, and that should get the district off our back. And we'll ask for notes from now on. And maybe we'll enrich the doctor a bit more, just so that we'll have a note.

It's all a big game and you have to know the rules to succeed (or not fail). The problem is finding out the rules.