“I was introduced to maybe like thirty people in the first five minutes of being here when I first started, and that says a lot about a working environment,” said Melissa Dawson, the new Lightridge Attendance Administrative Assistant.
Dawson, Lightridge’s newest hire in the attendance office, works alongside Umber Ahmad, arriving in a year of attendance chaos and new policies.
Previously, Dawson was a kindergarten teacher, however, with four children in multiple sports, she decided to find a better work-life balance.
“It’s nice to be doing this job with someone else instead of being in a room by yourself,” said Dawson. Before Lightridge, Dawson also worked as a registrar at middle school and was completely isolated and alone while she worked. “It’s nice to have different compartments [in the office] because we don’t have to worry about answering the phone and doing attendance and registration, it’s just solely attendance.”
“When [people] get into life and [become] an adult, [they] have to show up to work on time; [they] have to be responsible,” said Dawson.
In past years, Lightridge has shown leniency towards morning tardies, so students would be marked excused when arriving at school by the latest of 9:45. However, a new countywide LCPS policy starting this school year dictates that if students aren’t in class by 9:30 when the bell rings, they will be excluded from any extracurricular activities after school.
“I used to coach cheerleading over at Broad Run, so if any of my girls were absent or tardy, I sat them out. This has been something we’ve always had in place, but it’s been really hard to enforce it being that there’s only one person,” said Dawson.
“We’ve seen people really wanting to get into class on time, and that’s a good thing,” said attendance veteran Ahmad, when asked about their opinions on the new late policy. “If [students] are not in school for a valid reason, that’s perfectly fine, but it’s a great change that [it’s being enforced] and that students are expected to be present in school.”
