JAY – School Committee members are scheduled Thursday to review a draft policy that combines three policies dealing with student attendance, student absences and excuses and tardiness and truancy into one document.

The committee will meet at 6 p.m. April 3 at the high school library. On that agenda is also the nomination of a new high school principal.

Prior to that meeting, the committee and Budget Committee will meet in a special session at 5 p.m. at the same place to set a fiscal 2009 budget.

The committee’s review of its attendance policies came to light after questions arose in February about high school students receiving one personal day a year as long as a parent approves, and one unexcused tardy each season to allow them to participate in extracurricular or cocurricular events.

Those practices were determined not to be in the School Committee’s policies but rather in the high school handbook, committee Chairwoman Mary Redmond-Luce previously said.

Giving students one excused tardy each athletic season is an agreement reached between Athletic Director/Assistant Principal Kenric Charles and coaching staff, she had said, and is also not board policy.

Charles said in February that the personal day came about a few years ago.

“Students have things that are important to them that don’t necessarily meet state guidelines for being out of school,” Charles had said.

In March, the School Committee reviewed three individual policies on attendance regulations and asked Superintendent Robert Wall to combine them.

Under the new draft proposal, excused absences mean: approved prearranged absences; death in the immediate family; family emergencies; late arrivals/early dismissals due to medical appointments that cannot be scheduled outside of school hours; illness or injury of the student; and observance of a religious holiday.

The policy outlines the amount of time students need to be in attendance at school, which is a minimum of 90 percent of the instructional time scheduled for that school or grade, and they need to make satisfactory academic progress in order to be unconditionally recommended for promotion of the next grade.

All absences, excused or unexcused, are included in the calculation of the 90 percent attendance minimum, except that excused absences for religious holidays shall not be counted for the purpose of determining a student’s eligibility for promotion.

All absences must have a written or verbal explanation provided by the parent/guardian within 48 hours of the student’s return to school.

An absence for which no acceptable explanation is received shall be deemed unexcused, according to the proposed policy.

Students will be deemed tardy if they report to school or an assigned area late. It would be considered truancy if a student fails to report to school or an assigned area without a valid excuse.

Credit will be disallowed for work missed due to an unexcused absence, but students are encouraged to complete work to ensure success in future learning, the proposal states. Students who have excused absences are encouraged to make up work for absences and may receive credit for their work completed in a timely manner after their return to school. Students will be allowed one-day make-up time for each day’s absence.

The draft policy also carries an appeal process of failure to earn credit or a retention decision.