After not missing a day of school for over two years, Carlie Waxler had a choice to make.

Would the then-second grade student at Blanco Elementary School go with her mother on a trip to Louisiana or would she stay in Blanco so she wouldn’t miss school? The young student chose Blanco and school, and she’s chosen it every day the doors have been open.

Waxler’s decision as a youngster continued a streak that hasn’t stopped.

“I wanted to see how long I could go,” she said.

Over a decade later, she’s still going strong. The Blanco High School senior will graduate Friday night having never missed a single day of school since she started in kindergarten.

Waxler said she never really got sick much when she was young and realized in the second grade that she hadn’t missed a day of school.

The closest Waxler came to missing a day was in her freshman year of high school. She needed to leave early during eighth period for a doctor’s appointment. She waited long enough to leave past the cutoff time, in order to make sure she was counted present.

“I’ve always been a pretty healthy person,” she said. “When I got sick, it always seemed to be during an extended break from school, so it kind of worked out.”

It was much harder to keep the streak alive in high school than it was elementary or middle school, Waxler said. Attendance is taken earlier in the day in elementary and middle school, while in a high school a student must be present during each period for to be counted as present all day.

Did she ever think about missing a day and ending the streak?

“All the time,” Waxler said. “I couldn’t even tell you how many times I thought about it. At some point seniorities would kick in and I thought, I don’t want to go to school.”

Why did she keep going every day?

“I didn’t want to disappoint my second grade self,” Waxler said.

Keitha St. Clair, BHS principal, said she’s never seen a student accomplish the feat in her 23 years of education.

“I still don’t know how she pulled it off, but it’s so impressive,” St. Clair said. “She’s got true grit. She’s not going to give up.”

Waxler gave a nod to her principal, saying that St. Clair helped her arrange things and schedule appointments so she wouldn’t have to miss school. St. Clair was her principal in both middle and high school.

“I’ll always appreciate her support,” Waxler said.

Even though the coronavirus pandemic threw things off kilter during her final semester at BHS, Waxler didn’t let that stop her. She attended each of the online sessions she was required to every day after in-person school was canceled after spring break.

“At first thought it would blow over after spring break,” she said. “It was. nothing like I thought it would be.”

Waxler isn’t finished yet, though. After she graduates Friday from Blanco High School, she plans to keep the perfect attendance streak alive when she begins classes at Texas Tech University in Lubbock this fall.

For now, though, it’s time to celebrate graduation and her perfect attendance streak.

“I feel really good about it,” Waxler said. “It let me know if I put my mind to something, I can accomplish it. It gave me a whole new perspective on everything, to accomplish what I set out to accomplish.”