Zack Rappleye

Whiting

English 12 Period 6

6 March 2019

Capstone Action Project

The idea I had for my action project was a way to reduce absenteeism in my own school.
I started by looking over the attendance policy and looking over the rules and consequences for
those rules being broken. I found one specific rule that I found somewhat unreasonable. In my
school you are allowed four absences or tardies until your grade turns into a no grade. In my
mind an absence is much worse than a tardy, sometimes a tardy will happen just because you
stayed after class to ask your teacher a question, sometimes you will even be tardy because
you put your stuff in your bag after the bell rings. I think a tardy should count for half of an
absence, my reasoning for this is because it will get more students to go to class. There are
many students, including myself, that choose not to go after being tardy because you are gonna
get a no grade whether you are late or not go. One tardy should count for half of an absence,
meaning if four absences is a no grade then you would have to have eight tardies to get a no
grade.

My idea to get this to happen is to propose the idea to administration. I plan on going to
the assistant principal and explain my frustration and reasonings. I plan on talking to the
assistant principal to see if this is even something that could be changed. My goal is to talk to
the principal or even the district if I need to. I think if I could somehow prove that kids were more
likely to go to class after being late then it should be no problem at all. I would like to somehow
take a poll from students asking them if they were late how likely they were to still go to class or
if they would just skip. Even if I could show that 25% of kids that are tardy end up skipping
class, thats a 25% decrease of absenteeism. I think this is an achievable goal.

The reason I wanted to do this is to get more students to go to class. The more class you
miss, the more it hurts your grade. Administration wants you to go to class and if I could help
them from a students standpoint I could give them information they might not end up getting
otherwise.