Caught Unawares?

I was discussing a student about whom I'm concerned with my school's guidance counselor the other day.  The counselor had told me that the student's guardian was coming in for a meeting later this week and asked me for feedback about behavior, grades, attendance, etc.  Attendance is the foremost problem with this young lady, who has only been good for about 2 days a week all semester.

I told the counselor as much, and she nodded and said she'd mentioned the same to the guardian.  "She knew about all the absences," the counselor said, referring to the guardian.  "But she didn't know she was failing all her classes."

"Isn't it sort of self-explanatory that if you've missed 47 days of school, you're probably not passing all your classes?" said I, perhaps giving the counselor her Captain Obvious moment for the day.

She sighed.  "You would think," she said.

"If she would come to school, she'd be fine," I said.  "She's bright.  She understands things quickly.  It's just that she gets so far behind, she can't possibly catch up."

"I'll tell [guardian] that you said that," the counselor said. "But I guess the best we can hope for at this point is next year."

File this under Unfortunate, maybe even Tragic, as well as Obvious.