After the past few years of abominably bad attendance, New Trier leadership decided to up the ante with a new, very strict attendance policy. To enforce this new policy, the school created and published the Official 2023-2024 Attendance Handbook. Designed to guide the student body and the teachers through the extremely complicated web of attendance rules, this handbook quickly became the top-selling volume in the book store, followed only by Lord of the Flies. In response to the enthusiasm for the handbook, the school decided to add a class to its Program of Studies: Introduction to Attendance.
The class broke the record for student sign-ups during registration due to extreme confusion over the new policy.
To accommodate the huge number of interested students, the class is being offered at multiple levels: AP, level 4, level 3, level 2, and level 2E. In each class, the attendance policy handbook serves as the textbook to guide students through the quite challenging, yet rewarding learning journey presented by the class.
AP and level 4 classes go into greater detail, emphasizing the complicated procedures necessary to understand the inner-workings of the attendance policy. These classes also take a more philosophical approach to the attendance policy and debate the ethical and moral ramifications of the school’s most recent campaign.
Levels 3, 2, and 2e all focus more on the technicalities of the handbook. For example, many teachers decide to spend a generous amount of time discussing the “Sign In /Sign Out” (SI/SO) procedure for entering and exiting the school during the day. This new requirement has single-handedly caused more than 90% of “unexcused absences,” according to the attendance office.
“Yesterday, I received 5,323 calls from concerned parents questioning the validity of unexcused absences for their children,” Alexa Tendins, New Trier’s primary attendance staffer, recalls. That’s more calls than the number of students, so I’m not sure that the new policy is working.”
Principal MacMaffin responded to complaints by standing behind the policy.
“SI/SO is a great idea, and anyone who disagrees should just leave the school,” he said. He seemed reluctant to elaborate on this statement, though after we ended our interview with him, he attempted to log into PowerSchool and failed multiple times before throwing his laptop into the wall and yelling a long series of curses at the Greek and Roman gods of attendance.
Students who were lucky enough to be able to take Introduction to Attendance reported it being one of their most thought-provoking and intellectually challenging classes. Sally Digget, an avid attendance scholar, told us that she “found Introduction to Attendance to be the most exciting part of her day every day.” She went so far as to say that “even Lifetime Activities is not as interesting.” With such great feedback, the school told us that they plan to expand the class, adding more courses designed to understand school policy.
With this new array of course options, they say, students will be even more compelled to actually attend school.
