WAG Attendance Policy

[Anna's_Mom]

Actually no, if the kid practices 5 days a week they are allowed 9 of these type days per year. 9 days out of practice just because is alot especially considering the following. 3 weeks of vacation and 4 weeks the gym is closed throughout the year. That is total of 8 weeks and 4 days the kid is not practicing. This sounds like a very generous attendance policy to me.

That's true for the non-competitive season, but right now any absence would mean not competing that week so yes, this week my daughter went to practice after being too sick to go to school that day. I was 95% sure that it was a food-borne bug and not contagious, but still... But with only 6 chances to make her oh-so-important "move up" score, she wasn't about to miss a competition. So there is a lot of pressure to attend during September - November, but then it eases off. But she has missed family weddings and we've decided to not do weekend trips so that she didn't miss practice. My only real problem is that with practices both Friday and Saturday, a weekend family event takes two of those 9 absences and they can disappear really fast. The vacation weeks can only be used as the entire week, so that doesn't help any unless she was going to sacrifice a week of summer camp to attend a one-day event.

 

[wallflower]

I just tried to edit the post with this info... couldn't figure out how.

What our gym policy is trying to do is you are not allowed to miss more than 3 practices a month. We practice 5 days a week (Mon, Wed, Thurs, Fri 6-9 and Sat 10-1). If they miss more than 3 they have to pay for a private as a "makeup". If we don't pay for the private, they are bumped from the team to Xcel. If they miss any practice the 2 weeks before a meet they can't compete and we loss our money. At first, there were exceptions... like school related activities (like band concerts etc) and family events (weddings) but now it seems to be a bit scattered on what is acceptable or not.

It seems reasonable to me, but then again I have a child who has never missed 3 days of practice in an entire year and she does 6 days a week. They are not allowed to be absent without prior approval unless you are talking about an illness. We schedule summer vacations around the one week the gym is closed. That is just how we do it. I know there are different levels of commitment and that's great. Just sounds like a reasonable policy to me.

 

[Tbrov]

We still have practice when our gym is closed for a week in the summer for deep cleaning. Team is the only ones in the gym (meaning no rec), and in fact they help with a lot of the cleaning. You should hear some of the stuff they find when the clean the pit!

 

[kaloss]

Our gym does not have a published attendance policy, but it is expected that your child attends regular practice. The gym closed for one week this summer but that is not the norm. When the gym closes the rec program for holidays, team still has practice. Generally the girls practices are moved to a more convenient time during holidays (regular school breaks)

 

[kayjaybe]

If your gym rarely closes, how do they keep things clean? Two of our closed weeks are done so that everything in the gym is thoroughly cleaned -- carpets cleaned or replaced, walls painted, all equipment inspected and such. The other weeks are mostly to keep the rec classes on an even schedule -- so the gym is likely to be closed for the entire week for Thanksgiving week so that the classes that meet on Mondays have the same number of classes in the session as the classes that meet on Thursdays. Especially since the vast majority of rec students are from the same school district, so the gym follows their holiday schedule. There are probably 500 rec students compared to 50 (boys and girls) on the team, so we end up following their schedule.

Clarification - we do close for rec classes, but not for team, except that one week.

There is daily & weekly cleaning that happens and I've seen painting from time to time during times when rec classes aren't in. And honestly, we aren't the fanciest or cleanest facility around when it comes to the accumulation of chalk dust!

 

[wgymmom]

I don't think we really have an attendance policy. I think if you miss a bunch of practices before a meet, you might have to miss the meet, but my DD did states her first year after missing a practice right before it due to illness. Some girls do seem to have rather poor attendance though, and I worry about them. DD is more the type where it's a full-on disaster if she misses a practice.

Our gym gets cleaned nightly. Rec classes have weeks off, but team almost never does.

 

[OzZee]

Generally are these attendance policies as strict as they sound? eg. are you really meant to send in a contagious sick kid to practice (or one that isn't contagious but is sick and therefore would be unsafe in the gym). Or do they have these clauses in to stop the people that have a day off here and there for whatever reason?

If they were that strict I wouldn't be at that gym. Gymnastics is gymnastics, it isn't a child's whole life (even if they sometimes want it to be). My dd2 has missed a few days this term - 2 for school camp, 1 for choir performance and 1 for a cold. And I would not stay at a gym that thinks she should miss major lifetime once a year things for gymnastics. Her school camp was a highlight of her life and something she will remember forever (I know I still remember mine, and lol I'm still reliving hers with nightly stories), a couple of gym practices are just that (she certainly isn't going to remember if she went to gym on Monday the 10th September, lol). And you don't get many opportunities to sing at the Sydney Opera House and that is an amazing opportunity and one night in the year (she isn't going to not do choir just in case their one evening performance of the year may fall on a gym night). And I'm not sending her to the gym with a cold to infect her team mates, a night in bed and she was good the next day.
I would hope that gyms policies would look at the bigger picture/the child and not just one terms individual absences.

 

[Anna's_Mom]

Generally are these attendance policies as strict as they sound? eg. are you really meant to send in a contagious sick kid to practice (or one that isn't contagious but is sick and therefore would be unsafe in the gym). Or do they have these clauses in to stop the people that have a day off here and there for whatever reason?

In our case, sort of hard to tell. I know the "can't compete if missed practice that week" is very strictly enforced as we've had at least 1 scratch each meet so far this month. I know a couple of girls left because they were missing a lot of practices but I don't know if they were asked to leave or just realized they didn't want to make the necessary commitment. In the cases that you sight though, our policy would have excused those as school-mandated or as vacation (can't tell if choir is a school activity or not).

 

[NH~GymMom]

Our gym doesn't really have an attendance policy as far as I can tell. There's nothing in the team handbook in regards to how many practices you are allowed to miss. For us, make-ups can only be done during open gym and without instruction, so you don't really make up lost practices. That in itself is incentive to make it to practice if you are physically able.