Attendance dropped in upper school classes today as students travelled to the first weekend of the Coachella Music Valley Festival April 11- 14. It is unknown how many students in total are missing school because of the event, but a fourth period class had 11 out of 29 students absent on April 11. Only six students attended a Cinema Studies class.

For the third school year, the administration is continuing its attendance policy for students who miss classes for the Coachella Valley Music Festival. Students attending the event were asked to fill out an absence sheet notifying their teachers that they would miss class by asking for their signature. Additionally, the students must serve a detention when they return to school. An email was sent to parents to notify them of the attendance policy.

The policy was created during the 2011-2012 school year in response to the number of students who attend the festival each year. Last year, the average number of students who missed classes on both a Monday and Friday for the festival was approximately 118, according to the school attendance records. The total absences for this year are not known yet.

“The 2012-2013 absences affected the academic, sport, and other Harvard-Westlake so much, that we adopted the anti-Coachella policy and the number [of absences] dropped,” upper school attendance coordinator Gabe Preciado said. “We’ll see what effect it will have this year.”