Very Frustrating

I have a student who is quite bright, but her grades are slipping. Her algebra skills were already good when she entered my algebra class, but as the year progresses and the material veers farther and farther away from linear algebra, she understands less and less of it.

Her father contacted me and we set up a time to talk, which we did, and I expressed the fact that a kid missing 26 days (so far) is bound to fall behind even with help from home because she doesn't have a teacher to ask, and doesn't have peers to discuss the work with. All was fine when the father left - I told him that I have no doubts that the kid will make it to school the rest of the year, she'll begin to catch up, she'll be okay for geometry next year, yadda yadda, yadda.

Then the mother calls me, and seems furious that a kid that did have an "A" the first quarter has an "F" now (although this is after two weeks of work for the quarter). I explain everything as I had a week or so before with the father, but she doesn't think that he did a good enough job. She expresses her displeasure that I didn't call her when things went bad; I explained that she sees her child's grades continuously over the internet (which she conceded), that it is too early in the quarter to be alarmed since there are so few grades, and that, well, I didn't put it so bluntly, but "what do you expect of a kid that has missed 26 days of school in an honors class?"

She missed a day last week because of student council, that's 27!, and then Friday comes.

I go to the attendance page on the computer to set it up and see that she is marked as being absent. I mentally roll my eyes. When the students begin to come in, there is the student. I think to myself, "Self, her parents are sending her to school for algebra because they know that she's missed so many days".

She comes to see me and says, "I wasn't at school all day today, but my mother and I came to see my brother play in the band...."

I know where this is headed, she's going to say that her mother is making her stay the hour.

"....but now I have to go home. My mother told me to come upstairs to tell you that I am here."

Huh?

"Can you mark me here?"

I tell the poor child that when I take attendance, that I mark kids "present" if they are present and I mark them "absent" if they are absent.

"So you can't change it?"

"No, unless you stay."

I truthfully tell her that I actually cannot change it. Since the office has marked her absent for the entire day, I can't override it, so I tell her to go to the office to work things out. That way she her mother can hear the obvious from two people.

I find it very frustrating that a parent, knowing that her kid is doing poorly from being absent so much, would send her child to a teacher to tell them to mark them present despite the fact that a perfectly healthy girl is leaving for the day, according to the code on the attendance, for a family vacation.