If your children will be attending public school while at Two Coyotes, the following information can support you in working with your school administrator. In general, parents are able to request approval for our programs under the category of “Extraordinary Educational Opportunities.” Responses will vary district to district. The ideal scenario is Two Coyotes’ days being counted as a day of school and we can support you in reporting attendance to them if needed. Other schools may be more hesitant, but they will support your child’s time at Two Coyotes as long as there is no negative impact on your their formal education. Some schools don’t allow it but the parents choose to send their children anyway.
Here is a CT Board of Education document defining excused and unexcused absences (ideally our programs fall under B.6): http://www.lawadmin.com/sg/gendocs/definition_excused_unexcused_absences.pdf
Here is another document providing guidelines to districts for making decisions about unexcused and excused absences (see page 7 for the section on “Extraordinary Educational Opportunities”): http://www.lawadmin.com/sg/gendocs/guidelines_excused_and_unexcused_absences.pdf
The typical process you will go through with the schools will look like this:
- 1. Parents notify their school administrator of their plans to enroll their child in a Two Coyotes program.
- 2. You can share with them our Program Overview for the Full-Year Program, Granby, Newtown, or Killingworth.
- 3. You can share with them a personal note stating why you believe Two Coyotes programming will have a positive impact on your child’s experience in public school. You could also provide notes from their pediatrician, therapists, naturopaths, and/or other professionals talking about why Two Coyotes would be beneficial for their well-being or academic success.
- 4. We suggest making the initial request via email and then following up with an in-person meeting (or phone call if necessary) to discuss any questions or concerns in real time.
- 5. If you need to appeal a school district’s decision on excused absences, some of our parents have had success calling the State of Connecticut.
Please feel free to contact Ben DiNoia or Dani Scott with any questions about this process and, if you are able, please share with us how this process went with your school district. It is always helpful to have data on how our public school partners are working with our parents to make Two Coyotes a possibility for enriching their child’s education.