All a student has to do to be counted Present for the full day, for the school to be paid is go till NOON.
When my Grandson graduated HS the nasty biased Principal recognized students with 100% attendance for the year. He had not missed a day from K-12. No recognition. Only Place Kicker to be recognized on the Jeff Fisher sports show, Nashville, TN.
Oh, it's far worse than that. All we had to do is make one phone call home - whether it connected or not didn't matter (means we 'reached out') and the kid would be marked present for the day - or still enrolled even if we hadn't seen the kid in months and months.
Happened every day, all the time.