Absence notices

A parent picks a date, picks which of their child's classes are affected, and optionally adds a short reason. The teacher of each of those classes is notified right away, and gets a reminder email the evening before. When the teacher opens attendance that morning, the student is already flagged.

Administrators are deliberately left out of this loop. You are not emailed, and there is no admin queue of absences to work through. The whole point is that the message goes to the one person who needs it.

Absence notices are off until an owner or admin turns them on, and turning them on affects only your co-op.

Families see the new option immediately. If you turn it off later, the option disappears and no further notices can be filed; notices already sent stay visible to the teachers who received them.

There are three places a parent can start, whichever is closest to hand:

• My Classes — a Report an absence link beside each child's name, which covers every class that child has that day.
• The “…” menu on any single class row, for just that class.
• The class page itself, using the button next to Message class.

The date list only offers days the class actually meets, so a day your co-op isn't running never appears. If a child has several classes that day, they are all listed with a checkbox each — leave them all ticked to report the whole day, or untick the ones they will still attend.

A class that appears greyed out and cannot be ticked has no teacher assigned to it yet, so there is nobody for the notice to go to. Everything else on that day can still be reported; tell your co-op about the greyed-out one directly.

The reason box is optional. It is shown to the teacher exactly as written, so keep it to what the teacher needs (“dentist”, “out of town”) rather than medical detail.

Nothing about taking attendance changes. Three things are added:

• A notification when the notice is filed, and a reminder email the evening before class listing everyone who will be out.
• A Reported out badge on that student's row on the attendance sheet, with the reason if one was given.
• On the Teaching list, a count such as 2 reported out against each class's next meeting.

For a student who was reported out, tapping their row marks them absent instead of the usual present. That is the only behavior change, and the Absent and Excused buttons still work exactly as before. If the child turns up after all, mark them present as normal — the notice does not override you.

If you teach a class your own child is in, you will not be notified about a notice you filed yourself. It still appears on your attendance sheet and in the evening reminder.

Plans change. A filed notice appears on My Classes as a “Out on …” row with a Cancel link. Cancelling tells the teacher the student will be there after all.

Cancelling within a few minutes of filing does not notify the teacher — that is a typo being fixed, not news. Cancel later and the teacher is told, because by then they may have planned around it.

A notice is visible to the family who filed it and to the staff of that co-op. It is never shown to other families, and students signed in with a student login cannot see them at all.

Notices are kept rather than deleted when cancelled, so a co-op with an attendance policy has a record of what was reported and when.