Dear superintendent,

Have you ever gotten sick and had to stay home from school? Maybe you've had to stay out of school for more than a couple of days before. Most people would think that this wouldn't be a problem; you stay home for a while and then come back to school and get back to business as usual without any trouble. But in reality, that's not what happens. Missing a day of school for any reason is a lot worse than most people would think. What was only meant to be a day's worth of work can spiral off into weeks of playing catch up. This is where the ability to take classes from home, even if it was just the very basic parts of a class, would be useful.

It's not wholly uncommon to miss a couple of days of school. Whether it's for some sort of family emergency or simple sickness, missing one or two days of school isn't out of the ordinary by any stretch of imagination. What is out of the ordinary is missing weeks or even months of school at once. Whatever the reason, this will leave most students heavily behind in terms of curriculum. Arrangements can be made to either exempt them from this missed information or to assist them in learning it more quickly, but neither of these methods seem completely effective. If students were able to take their schoolwork with them over extended absences, even if only to avoid falling behind, it would remove the need for such measures entirely.

When I was a young child, I broke my arm. I was out of school for months in the healing process alone, not to mention the physical therapy afterwards. This placed me well behind the other students in what I had learned. I eventually caught up, but it was a time consuming and difficult process. If there had been a way for me to keep up with my classes while in the hospital, I likely would've never fallen behind in the first place. I hope that you can see why I'm advocating for such a thing to be created. Missing a day of school seems more punishing than anything else, with students quickly falling behind and struggling to catch back up, especially in high school. This leads to students going to school while sick, which results in other students getting sick as well. If there was just another way to avoid falling behind, I think that so many students would be doing better.

Sincerely,

Generic_Name