Attendance is all-important

Two minutes left until class starts and you know it. But deep down inside you don’t really care anymore. Maybe you just don’t have the encouragement, or maybe you don’t have the resources to help you get to class on time. Either way, Darrin Vanderpan, the new attendance intervention specialist, is here to help you.

Vanderpan helps students with anything that has to do with attendance at CVHS. Some examples of this are tardies, cuts, detentions, in-school suspensions, and long-term leaves.

If students are not going to class on time or cutting classes, they will receive a warning for their first unexcused absence or tardy. When the student gets three tardies or when cutting class becomes obvious, then he/she will start getting detentions.

As soon as the student starts accumulating detentions, the punishment changes to Saturday school. This is where Vanderpan usually intervenes. After a student gets tardy after tardy or cut after cut, Vanderpan might call the student in and ask why he/she is getting so many tardies or unexcused absences.

“I help students with their problems and help them get back on track,” Vanderpan said.

Students that are in a situation where they don’t have the resources to get themselves to class on time can discuss this with Vanderpan, and Vanderpan will try to help them fix that problem. Or maybe the students just don’t feel the need to go to class anymore or they don’t think that being in class on time is something that is important. If that is the case, then Vanderpan would give them the encouragement that they need.

Vanderpan is in charge of detentions and in-school-suspensions, too.

He is also the person students should go to if they are taking an absence of five days or longer from the school and still want to get credit for their classes. The students would go talk to Vanderpan a week before their leave to receive an independent study packet.

Vanderpan is helping kids from CVHS to stay on track with their learning. To get students to stay on track, Vanderpan doesn’t punish them by giving more referrals and Saturday schools, but he encourages them by offering help and advice.

“I love it here, and all the students are great,” Vanderpan said.