Schools are big on attendance these days and I support that with no problem. In fact, if there is a student with a high absence rate schools are now taking parents to court for truancy.
But to fine parents because a child skips school is wrong.
The problem with placing this big emphasis on attendance is that you force many completely uncontrollable kids to come to school and disrupt the entire class decorum.
Example-I sub in a large urban district.Lets say thirty kids are officially enrolled.Usually at the high school level perhaps 18-20 will show up on a regular basis.Thus the class is managable at that size.Yet if all thirty show up you will have chaos because the ten to twelve that are absent are almost always your thugs and jerks that won't do a damn thing in class but disturb others.
If schools had an assertive discipline policy class size would not be an issue.Yet the policy is way too lax and poor behavior is enabled throughout the system.