A Wootton High School travel hockey player says Montgomery County Public Schools flagged him for truancy after he missed class for out-of-town games. The case highlights a gap in the district's attendance rules for students in travel sports.

Max Lee, a Wootton student, wrote in an opinion piece in the school newspaper Common Sense on Oct. 27 that he received a warning letter about the MCPS Truancy Prevention Program (TPP) after accumulating eight unexcused absences in one quarter. He was not skipping school. He was traveling to compete in hockey games across the country during school hours.

"I wasn't choosing to stay home or not go to school," Lee wrote. "I was traveling to compete in a sport and therefore wasn't able to go to school."

Lee argued that MCPS should create a formal approval process so students in travel sports, music competitions and similar activities are not lumped in with students who skip class.

What the policy says

The district's attendance regulation, known as JEA-RA, lists 11 categories of lawful absences. Those include illness, religious holidays, court summons, hazardous weather and school-sponsored work. Students participating in MCPS interscholastic athletics are counted as present because they remain under district supervision.

Travel sports fall into none of those categories.

The regulation does allow principals to use discretion to excuse absences beyond the listed categories, but notice and a request must be provided before the absence. Separately, the regulation states that family travel requests are "generally" not considered lawful absences.

For students with unexcused absences, the consequences go beyond a letter. Under MCPS grading rules, teachers may deny credit for missed assignments or assessments tied to unlawful absences. Students who reach an unlawful absence rate of 20 percent can be referred to the Truancy Review Board.

Student pushback at two Potomac schools

Lee is not the only student raising concerns about the attendance policy. The Churchill Observer, Winston Churchill High School's student newspaper, published a separate opinion piece on Oct. 5 arguing that the district's attendance and grading rules punish students for circumstances beyond their control. That piece focused on the broader policy, noting that absences from family emergencies and transportation disruptions also count as unlawful.

The TPP is an early intervention initiative run by the Montgomery County State's Attorney's Office. It primarily serves 25 middle schools and two high schools that requested the program. Whether Wootton is one of those two high schools, or whether Lee's letter was a general MCPS attendance warning rather than a formal TPP referral, is unclear from available records.

During the 2023-2024 school year, the program served more than 300 families, according to the State's Attorney's Office.

What's missing

No MCPS official response to the travel-sports attendance question appears in public records. It is not clear whether any Board of Education member has raised the issue. The attendance regulation was most recently revised on Aug. 28, but the available text does not indicate what changed in that revision.

No attendance-policy discussion appears on the Board of Education's published meeting calendar.