Since their introduction to classrooms, scanners used by students for attendance have been on the fritz, incorrectly marking many students as absent. Consequently, pink attendance slips to correct these errors made more of an appearance on campus than ever before.
Scanners were added last year to expedite taking attendance. But the Chromebooks the scanners are connected to are prone to displaying errors, leaving teachers to manually take attendance and eliminating the supposed efficiency advantage.
Previously, the school encouraged the use of pink attendance slips from the office. Students had to pick up a slip, get it signed by the teacher of the class where they were wrongly marked absent, and then return the signed slip to the office.
Many corrections later, the attendance office has made the brilliant decision of making the system completely digital.
Everything is done through a link in the attendance office page on CalHigh.Net. It sends students to a page called “Informed K12,” where they can fill out a short form that is emailed to their teacher. The teacher then digitally signs the slip, and off it goes to the attendance office.
The attendance office has made it clear on its page that absences not cleared within two days after a student’s return to school will be recorded as unexcused. If that window is missed, the error in their attendance is permanent.
Students should also only submit an absent check if a mistake is still present. Often, the attendance secretaries have already corrected the error before any action is taken on students’ parts.
The former pink slips were very inconvenient and time-consuming. Instead of fixing technical errors, they placed unnecessary responsibility on students and wasted valuable time.
The change to a digital system was necessary for students, teachers and attendance secretaries, alike. Now that this burden has been lifted, the next step is to finally remove the root of the problem: the scanners.