If your attendance isn’t messed up, you’re either lying to yourself or just haven’t checked Skyward for a while. Flex-Mod was introduced to Sheboygan South in the 2015-16 school year. The flexible scheduling has many upsides to it, including more options for classes to take, lots of personal learning time (PLT), and offers a college-like feel to every school day. The downsides? Wonderful conflicts and what we’re going to talk about: Attendance.

If we go to class every day and never skip, how can I still have unexcused mods? Conflicts in your schedule will more than likely make up a majority of your incorrectly marked unexcused absences. “I usually get around 50-60 correction slips a day… Most corrections involve a conflict,” Said Mrs. Laake (Or Kim to most students). The problem with conflicts is that if you leave a class early and show up to your other conflicting class late, you have a chance of getting marked unexcused for the mods of your conflicting class if the attendance was already taken and had you marked as absent, or ‘unexcused’. Getting marked unexcused comes easier when you have a ‘full-phase’ conflict and you can only end up making one of the classes. Being marked absent from one class will overrule the marking of present in the other class.

Following conflicts, study hall mods actually come in 2nd to the main cause for incorrectly marked absences. The secret to studying hall’s unexcused mods will remain a mystery, as it mostly has to do with a technical malfunction. There are ways you can limit your bad luck with study hall mods though: always make sure your name pops up in the lower right-hand corner of the Chromebook, make sure it says “-Your Name- Signed into Study Hall,” and always be sure you’re supposed to be in study hall and not another class.

Even though attendance issues are a hassle, you can count on the problem to a trend in the right direction. Starting 2nd semester, there will be new scanners that will be implemented in every classroom for students to sign in to class with. In order to remove the problem with conflicts, signing in to class with the new scanner will remove the problem of being marked absent in another conflicting class. If you forgot your ID card, you can access your personal barcode through your phone and use that instead.

“The biggest struggle comes from flipping it from students and teachers managing attendance, and we will change it to mostly all student-based attendance,” said Principle Formolo. These new systems will hopefully help the attendance rate go up by removing false markings.

It’s good to know that the administration is working on the problem, and it is a guarantee that the attendance will get better over time. Strict attendance may seem pointless, but it ensures that the school can locate you whenever in case of an emergency. It also is a requirement that you attend school in order to graduate, so frequently checking your attendance for errors and filling out correction slips are a must. Having a good relationship with your teachers also helps. They are just as frustrated with the attendance as you are and it helps a lot when you and the teacher are on the same page when it comes to dealing with conflicts/corrections.