Absences

Regular attendance and prompt arrival at school are vital to the VPA student’s attitude and subsequent success as a serious scholar.

It is the responsibility of the parent/guardian to call the school before 8:00 A.M. to report an absence by leaving a message on the attendance line: 603-263-1128. Students will be recorded as having an unexcused absence if no message is left. (The administration will not usually attempt to contact parents in the event of a message not being left.) Please be sure the office has your current work and home telephone numbers on file. Whenever possible, if a student absence is anticipated, we recommend that the student notify his or her teachers and request the assignments prior to the absence. It is the responsibility of the student to make up all missed assignments after an absence from school. If a student is unable to attend school and seeks his or her assignments, the student should contact a classmate for that information, not the school office. Once again, it is the responsibility of the student to make up missed homework after any absence, planned or due to illness, in a timely manner. Each teacher will have an established make-up policy, including appropriate deadlines, for missed work. At the discretion of the Headmaster, students may not be allowed to make-up for missed work due to an unexcused absence or suspension. Parents will receive a detailed attendance report at the end of each grading period.

Since regular attendance is essential to a student’s success at VPA, and numerous absences are also destructive to the student’s and the school’s morale, VPA has a policy of assigning incompletes for semester grades to those students who miss more than 10 full days (or the equivalent thereof in partial absences) in a semester. Students will need to repeat the grade to remove the incompletes from their academic record. Only the Headmaster may make exceptions to this policy in the case of very serious illness or approved leave of an academic nature.

Illness

If your child has a fever or is otherwise ill, it is best to keep the child at home, rather than send him/her to school where others may be exposed to infection. Students who come to the reception desk with a fever will be sent home upon parent contact. Each family should have an emergency card on file that specifies what medicines may be administered by the school and what action to take in the event of illness or accident. Please see the section on medication for additional information regarding prescription and OTC medications.

Tardiness

VPA recognizes that a student may be late on occasion due to transportation problems or a family emergency. Students who arrive on campus before 8:20am should go directly to class; students who arrive after 8:20am must report directly to the front office for a late pass in order to be admitted to class. If your child will be late, please provide him/her with a signed excuse or sign them in at the office on arrival.

VPA does distinguish between cases of planned tardiness (e.g., due to a doctor’s appointment) and accidental tardiness (due to a student oversleeping, transportation problems, or some other late start). In cases of planned tardiness, families should try to deliver their student near the end of an instructional period, and should either send the student in with a signed note of explanation or walk the student in to sign him/her in.

The school frowns, however, upon the accumulation of accidental tardiness. Persistent tardiness interrupts the instruction and undermines the morale that are of benefit to all students and families. On the third occasion that a student has an accidental tardy in a quarter (either late arrival to school or late arrival to any class during the school day), a detention slip will be issued to the student by the teacher. (Of course, arrival at school after first hour will also be counted as tardiness.) For each subsequent tardy in the quarter, another detention will be issued. When a student has received four detentions for tardiness in a quarter then he or she may receive an in-school suspension for a duration determined by the Headmaster.