1,260 Days of Learning Without Skipping a Beat

Cari Doman admits that there were a couple of days during the past seven years when she at least thought about not going to school.

But the 11-year-old Whitman Elementary School sixth-grader liked school enough to go, even when she had a tummy ache or the beginnings of a cold.

On Monday, the school rewarded her perseverance with a special plaque for doing something that city school officials said they have not heard of in recent memory:

She compiled a perfect attendance record for the past seven years at the Clairemont-area school, from kindergarten through sixth grade. That’s 1,260 days without a single absence or tardy notice.

“After second grade, I sort of became aware of not (having missed), and by the end of fourth grade, I thought, this is getting neat,” Cari said Monday.

“I like school, I like looking forward to going to school, to seeing my friends, to learning new and different things.”

Sixth-grade teacher Henry Nakasone called Cari “an excellent student, just excellent, and always a good citizen, helpful around school, willing to do anything. . . . I’d like to have plenty like her.”

Cari especially enjoys art and studying science, in part because she wants to work with animals as a career. There are two dogs, five cats, a rabbit and aviary full of birds that she and her two older sisters take care of.

For Cari’s parents, the attendance record seems almost unbelievable, even for her father Steven, who has missed only one day of work during the last 11 years as a Goodyear tire employee.

Her mother, Pat Doman, works as an attendance clerk at nearby Madison High School and has probably heard every excuse in the world for missing a day of school.

“It just seems that very time she happened to get sick, it was always on a weekend, with a fever developing on Friday night and all gone by Monday,” Pat Doman said. “And, when she had a sore throat a couple of times, we figured we would try going off to school anyway, since she could always call me if things got worse.”

Pat Doman said a lot of people have asked her and her husband their secret--not only for Cari’s love of school, but for the academic success of their older daughters as well.

“It’s always talking with your kids, it’s eating together, playing together, having a good sense of humor, finding something funny in everything, being involved with the school in the PTA and other activities,” she said. “We always do things together, such as softball, soccer, camping. The kids are close to their grandparents, to the aunts and uncles.

“Iguess it’s being consistent, but I do know other parents who are (good) and they have problems with their kids, so it’s kind of hard” to say with certainty.

Cari said that the key to her enjoyment of school “is to have a lot of friends and have someone there to support you.”

In fact, her best friend since preschool, fifth-grader Abby Gutowski, received a certificate Monday for having compiled a perfect attendance record for six years.

“We think it is really neat,” Cari said.