by Lauryn Chavez | staff writer
Students can now only have 5 absences – instead of 9 – during the fall semester as the campus continues to adjust to virtual learning and a new daily schedule. After 5 absences students will not be able to receive credit for their class without intervention.
“At the high school level, every class period there’s a state attendance rule so we have to attend our classes 90% of the time in order to get the credit and so what that means is since we are on this kind of college plan where we have Monday- Wednesday- Friday classes is essentially you can be absent 5 times and on the sixth absence you will be non credited,” Miranda said.
Attendance recording procedures now indicate how students can opt to attend a live or asynchronous class period. New attendance policies are a result of the campus continuing to make changes for the fall semester.
“I think the key to understanding things this year is as long as we’re 100% virtual – a student has to engage and there’s different measures of engagement,” assistant principal Kristina Miranda said.
Attendance will be based on the students engagement during class, whether it’s synchronously or asynchronously.
“One of the ways is obviously you know the synchronous instruction so joining a teachers zoom when that class is scheduled, and another way is by going to our LMS system which would be Google classroom and making some progress on the learning plan and then the final way is the submission of an assignment,” Miranda said
Online learning is conveniently adaptable if you cannot attend the live sessions.
“I think you have a lot of flexibility right now while we’re hundred percent virtual. I’m going to encourage Johnson students to join the synchronous live instruction, there’s no substitute for being with that teacher and receiving that one-on-one instruction,” Miranda said.
Students will benefit from the live classes as they’re the closest thing to in-school classes.
“So your attendance would be in skyward which is another good reason to go to the launchpad because it’s a one stop shop to get everything you need and go to multiple applications,” Miranda said.
Viewing class attendance can be seen in skyward through launchpad which can be accessed through the school website.
“So we always always always recommend that you go through launchpad. And it’s just again because we’re dealing with technology here, but sometimes it fails us and you know something crashes so we’ve got several checks in place when it comes to teachers taking attendance, but logging in through the Launchpad is just an additional check and verification to make sure that we’re reporting the attendance correctly,” Miranda said.
Launchpad makes grades, textbooks, and Google Classroom easily accessible while authenticating your attendance when used.
“They just told me to sign in at the start of the day and every time I get to class and I sign in every morning and sometimes I forget to sign in before class,” senior Ciella Almazan said.
Teachers have been encouraging students to use launchpad to confirm their attendance, but sometimes it’s neglected throughout the day.
“As far as getting into your teachers zooms though you have about 6 minutes and the teachers will continue to admit to the waiting room and it’s just like years prior you have 6 minutes to get to class right so if you don’t get to you know that waiting room within those six minutes and you are not going to be able to join us for synchronous instruction for the day instead you’d have to do you asynchronous instruction,” Miranda said.
