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The Gift of a Catholic Community - Article from Catholic Exchange
The best way to begin addressing attendance is through the lense of the Catholic Community. St. Paul reminds us that though we are one body, we are many parts. Each of us has a God given role to play in our communities even as young people!
Society and culture today emphazie individualism so strongly today, that in some ways we are isolating ourselves from others. It is important to know that the Church is still THE HOME for Catholics and Christians.Attendance is important.
We work with families on a case by case basis, of course - but it is important - AND we assume that religious education for your child is a priority. We also assume your family attends Mass. Please help make this program successful by communicating with us if your child will be absent. It is as simple as writing us a note and handing it in to their Catechist. Writing an email to religioused@stjamesapostle.org and keeping us in the loop.
The more we can help hold you accountable for, the easier it will be in preparing your child for the next level of religious education.
Otherwise we have a rule of 4 absenceses or more with missing/NO communcation will cause us to evaluate the preparedness of your child and see if a course of action must be taken.
We do ask that if you move or decide not to send your child, PLEASE LET US KNOW. Do not be embarassed, please communicate with us so we can 1. help you if possible and 2. have up to date correct information so that we can remove your child from the rosters and email lists. -
Can my child make up a missed class?
We do not offer any in person "make up" classes if your child is absent from any class. In most cases, it is simply a matter of communicating with the catechist on the chapter/session missed, completing the pages in the workbook, and participating at Mass and the usual prayer life.
Absent is absent. You can make up the work, but you can not undo the fact that the student was not present in class. When attendance is taken, we are recording whether or not they were present in the class. This is important to distinguish for legal reasons and safety reasons. It does not mean the work cannot be made up, which is always an option. We just cannot UNMARK someone asbsent who is not physically present at that time.
And Absent note is always required so that it counts as excused. Unexcused absences could lead to penalization in your child's ability to move onto the next grade level and will require much more extra work depending on how many classes are missed. We hope to avoid this, but we expect that when a parent registers they have taken into account all of the committments in their family's life and made Religious Education the priority (this does not count personal and medical situations - we mean sports, vacations, etc...). We are always here to help, but we can only accomodate so much depending on the situation presented to us.
Thank you for your understanding!