4920 W Highland Ave
McAllen, TX 78501

This school has been the worst to deal with in regards to attendance! My oldest daughter was highly involved in church as she served as the Regional Leader for the South Central region. With this leadership role, my daughter was involved with creating spiritual retreats 4x a year that involved 150-400 youth members from CO, NM, TX, OK, SD, KS. SHS did not recognize her role nor involvement with church and would not pre-approve any missed days. Even with a letter from the Director of our church. They said her involvement was not recognized as a Holy Day and would marked all her missed absences as unexcused. In addition, they are not giving credit to my Junior student due to attendance. My Junior student had Dr's orders to stay home as she was dx with hand foot & mouth which is highly contagious. So in order to avoid further contamination, we kept her quarantined at home for 4 days (Dr's orders were for 7 days). My daughter had 1 more absence, and now is currently not getting credit for classes that she has successfully completed. SHS states that no credit will be issued if 90% of school is not attended regardless of approved or not approved attendance. They have not been willing to work with us and just state that although the class was completed, my daughter will not be getting credit!This is absolutely ridiculous as my kids have been excellent students and excel academically. I am appalled that Religious Leadership roles outside of school are not recognized and were counted against my oldest.. and that Dr orders to stay home counted against my Junior student. The staff at SHS was neither willing or able to work with us on these matters as they stated that the State of TX requires ALL students to be at school for 90% of the time or NO CREDIT will be given. After further investigation on the state of TX attendance policy, I have found this to not be true, however SHS will not comply with anything else.

The staff is amazing! They always go above and beyond for these kids. I am SO glad my son (8th grade) and soon my daughter(6th grade) are apart of the SNJH family. The teachers are always reaching out to update parents on progress, upcoming events, or what improvements the students should focus on, and everyone from the principle, band directors, substitutes, bus drivers, etc. really make it a point to make parents and students feel welcomed, and involved. We absolutely love this school.

The kinder department is great. The teachers are awesome and have noticed that not just my kids excel but others do as well. My kids look forward to attending class, and I contribute that to the excellent teaching and to the teachers who make the children feel welcomed and that they belong. Thank you Donna Wernecke staff.