Attendance Policy

Per the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE), “The school can be effective in educating a child only if the child is in school.”

tate law requires Pennsylvania Leadership Charter School (PALCS) to be open 180 days a year and in operation for 990 hours. In compliance with this law, PALCS has established and published a 180-day academic calendar.

The attendance requirement is met by logging on to PALCSchool each school day listed in the academic calendar. As a virtual school, student attendance is verified by electronically logging on to PALCSchool. If a student fails to log in to PALCSchool, he or she is absent.

Please note that, as part of your student’s curriculum, she/he may be required to attend virtual lessons/sessions one or more times per week. Absences from mandatory virtual lessons may adversely affect the student’s grade.

Attendance and participation in onsite state assessments are also mandatory. Each missed day of scheduled state assessments will be documented as one unlawful absence.

Occasionally, students are unable to log on and complete their schoolwork on a given day; this is considered an absence. Acceptable reasons for a student absence include illness or injury, medical appointments, family emergencies, observance of religious holidays, educational opportunities or family trips (see Student Educational Leave of Absence below).

In the case of a system-wide failure of PALCS that prohibits students from logging in to PALCSchool and completing their work, no absence will be charged to the student. In the event of such a school-wide outage that prohibits children from attending and completing their work, an additional school day will be added to the school calendar and families will be notified of the change.

In all cases aside from a system-wide failure, a written excuse, outlining the reason for an absence, must be submitted online through the parent/guardian’s PALCSchool account to the Attendance Office within three days of a student’s absence. If the excuse is not submitted by the end of the third day following the absence, the absence will be unexcused.

To submit an excuse, the parent/guardian should select the “Attendance” icon on the left-hand navigation bar in the PALCSchool Lobby. You will be given a menu from which to choose the reason for your child’s absence.

While the school strongly prefers for parents to submit a timely excuse for each day of absence, it is possible for parents to submit one excuse for multiple consecutive days of absence. However, the Attendance Office must receive an excuse no later than three days after each absence. [Example: a student is absent Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. An excuse for the Monday absence is due by Thursday, even though an excuse for the Wednesday absence is not due until the following Monday.]

Additionally, parents of students missing more than three consecutive school days due to illness must provide a note from a physician in addition to the written excuse from the parent. A doctor’s note may be submitted to attendance@palcs.org.

The video below provides parents with a walk-through of our Attendance Tab.