They're paying for perfect attendance.
Delta Academy, one of the Clark County School District's charter schools, began the program after seeing daily attendance average 85 percent last semester.
"We attempted punitive measures in years previous -- suspensions, detention, truancy letters, threats of fining the parents 100 dollars for educational neglect -- and none of that really worked," said Executive Director Kyle Konold.
Students are paid $10 per week in gift cards to attend class.
In order to ensure students are not just showing up to collect the cards, the school evaluates their grade performance and behavior before distributing the payoff.
Before receiving the money, students are evaluated on not only attendance, but their grades and behavior.
FOX5's Stefanie Jay goes inside Delta Academy Thursday on FOX5 News at Five
"It's just extra motivation. It's really inspiring that your school cares enough about you to put money aside for doing something you're just expected to do," said sophomore student Christina Roberts.
Konold and his staff set aside about $90,000 from their budget to pay for the gift card program, but the fact that Delta Academy receives taxpayer dollars has drawn criticism.
--Stefanie Jay
Date: 09/01/2011
You would have to pay me a lot more than $10 a week to spend that much time in the crumbling wastes of space that CCSD calls 'schools', but it is important to remember that Las Vegas is the dumbest city in America and its schools aren't just mediocre, they're astoundingly bad. This gross misuse of taxpayer dollars is probably the closest thing to honest money that these future prison inmates will ever earn. This incentive might be worth it if they used their gift certificates to purchase food that their crack addict parents won't buy for them, but they'll probably just trade them in for violent video games and smack.
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