Student racks up Perfect attendance -- for 13 years

Meghan Beltrami chalked it up to good luck when she came down with the chicken pox the day after kindergarten let out.

Her luck continued for the next 12 years. Meghan, 18, will graduate Saturday from Carson High School with a perfect attendance record.

Not just through high school. Not just through middle school. Not just through elementary school. Through them all.

"I didn't want to have to make up any work," she said. "I just wanted to be on time and on schedule."

Meghan said she did not set out with a goal of perfect attendance.

"It just happened that way," she said. "I always went to school because I like being with my friends and learning new things."

And she has continued to make it to school every day throughout her senior year, even while balancing a part-time job as a file clerk for the Nevada Health Care Center.

She credits her mother, Elizabeth Beltrami, a second-grade teacher at Seeliger Elementary School, with her natural desire to learn.

But that doesn't mean it was always easy.

"In the beginning of elementary school, I hated reading," she said. "I couldn't figure it out. But my teachers taught me how and now I love reading."

It was her persistence that set her apart, said Superintendent Mary Pierczynski, who was Meghan's principal while at Eagle Valley Middle School.

"She always went so far above and beyond," Pierczynski said. "She just worked her head off."

Like all students, however, Meghan had her slumps.

"It was hard sometimes," she said. "There were times I didn't want to get up, but I had to. And it was very worth it to go to school."

After graduation, Meghan plans to attend Western Nevada Community College, then the University of Nevada, Reno to pursue a degree in elementary education.

"I like helping little kids," she said. "I like to see them mold their minds and learn new things."

Meghan is from Carson City where she lives with her mother, Elizabeth, and father and 16-year-old brother, both named Kirk Beltrami.