Friendship Public Charter School Online Has ‘Highest Attendance’ Rates in DC

The highest attendance rates of 99.8 percent in the city for the 2017-2018 school year has been reported by Friendship Public Charter School Online in Washington. D.C. It is the only K-8 tuition-free virtual School in the district to record such high attendance rates.

D.C. lacks policies to determine virtual school programs and as such officials from these schools can determine attendance number as they like.

For most of the days in the week, the Friendship Public Charter School Online building in Northwest D.C. has only a custodial worker and a few maintenance men who stay in the building on regular basis. The students attend the campus only on Thursdays and they see their teachers via internet on their computers screens in their homes.

In order to be counted present, the students of Friendship Online are required to complete five hours of academic work, according to the school teacher Tracy Sloan. This attendance policy is similar to state policy that requires students to attend schools for 80 percent of the school day.

The students have to show that they’ve worked 25 hours by the end of the week. “If I see one day they did eight lessons and one day they only got two, well maybe they were prepping because they knew that they had some sort of event or something,” said school teacher Amy Fuller. “So those hours that they worked, those hours count even though they have divided them between the two days.”

However, Karen Williams, the president of the D.C. State Board of Education which approves attendance policies, is unsure if the attendance policy of virtual schools follow the District board regulations.

“We haven’t even looked at the implementation and the ramifications of virtual schools because there is only one in the city. I know that sounds bad, but we haven’t,” said Williams.