Schools have attendance policies in place to help ensure that kids come to class as often as possible, and only miss when there is a valid reason. Or at least that should be the goal.

What would you do if you were a student with chronic attendance issues, and when you came to school really late one day because you overslept, your teacher said that you were already past the cutoff for attendance, so it wouldn’t count if you stayed?

That is what happened to the student in this story, so he just left and went home for the day, missing the afternoon’s classes.

While I can see why the student loved this, I don’t think it was very responsible of the teacher. Why would he encourage a kid with attendance issues to miss even more school? Read the story below and see what you think about the situation.

School policy says I’m not here? I guess I’ll go home.

A rough family life led to me having difficulties in high school in the early 2000s.

Getting up on time is a challenge for many people.

I’d often have a very difficult time waking up in the morning and I was chronically late.

I woke up at 11:45 AM on one of my worse days, nearly a full four hours after school was supposed to start. I walked there anyway and made it to my science class, the last class of the morning before lunch.

This guy sounds like a great teacher.

This class was run by Mr. Dirk. Mr. Dirk was a bit of a meme on the campus; he always wore the same newsboy cap and drove a massive pick-up truck all the way from a neighboring state.

We called it the Dirkmobile, but it wasn’t out of spite, everyone loved this guy.

Mr. Drik seems legitimately concerned.

I get into class and it’s one of those days where a lot of people are absent due to flu season or something like that.

Mr. Dirk knew my situation and asked where I was coming from, and I told him the truth, I had a rough night and couldn’t wake up for the life of me.

Even if this is true, he shouldn’t be telling that to a student.

“You know,” he said, “school policy counts you as absent if you don’t arrive by 12:00 PM. So at this point, it doesn’t matter if you stay for my class, or any other classes, really.”

“Seriously?”

Does this teacher really think it is better for him to miss even more school?

“I never saw you come into my class,” he concluded, turning his attention back to the novel he was reading and subtly hinting that he didn’t care if I just walked off campus at that point. So I did.

School rules say I’m so late that I’m already absent? May as well go home. The only consequence was that I was counted absent, but I was so tired all the time that I just didn’t care anymore.

While I can certainly see why this kid liked what happened, that was a terrible thing for the teacher to do. Implying to kids that school doesn’t matter, or getting them to miss even more of it, is just wrong.

If you enjoyed this post, check out this story about a student who was threatened after refusing an elective exam, so they took the case to the district.

Let’s see what the people in the comments have to say about this story.

I agree, the teacher only hurt the student more.

What this commenter did makes sense.

The teacher didn’t do this kid any favors here. Honestly, the teacher should get in trouble for this, and the school should update its policy.

Schools should be encouraging kids to come to school as much as possible (unless they are sick, of course). A half day at school is way better than no time at school. Surely the teacher should have known this.