One small student begins school but hardly ever attends…here’s what happens: Official district letters are mailed and more attendance letters follow. Phone calls are made. Family members are contacted and new and/or alternating busing arrangements established. The result: more days are missed, more emails are sent and social workers are sent to the home. The child returns sporadically, then quits coming again.
Calling cards are dropped off at the house and then addresses change. Phone numbers change. Contact is lost. This small student is in and out; in and out. New busing is arranged. The system bends over backwards and stands on its head, all for naught. A milestone is reached; 50 days absent.
The crowd of adults trying to cajole just one family to send their child to school grows weary and tired of it all. Resolve is broken. Then the district head of attendance is contacted. Child Protective Services is reached; a report is filed. The big guns attempt to shake something out. Days go by. 60 days absent. No case worker contact; then 63 days absent and counting. To anyone working outside the confines of our district, be assured this scenario is real and shockingly common.
The veneer of organization and efficiency needs to be peeled away…and something else needs to be done. Find a way…some way to enforce attendance…immediately. 63 long days…
Day 66…absent. No information on the recent district attendance blitz. A blitz? We need a major change; maybe something besides using slightly antiquated terminology.
It needs to be impossible for any one child to miss so much school.
Day 67…no student. It is a circular firing squad…which office/person didn’t call/document/respond/pursue…and how shall we fix not calling/documenting/responding/pursuing…what next?
Day 68…no student. Enforce attendance! It’s a challenge; apparently an insurmountable one. School attendance is something we as a nation, our culture agreed upon…years ago.
Day 69…no student. I wonder how many people who work outside our schools have any idea about our absenteeism problem?
Day 70…big unwieldy systems do not work well. It is too easy to hide behind phone trees, voice-mails, protocol, social niceties and the hope that ‘someday, someone will probably do something’…
Day 72…if any other attendance official from Central Office wishes to grace our presence and lecture us about attendance, I would suggest that they don’t. Find my/our student…then we’ll talk.
Four years later…an update…I had hoped for change. However, one of my students missed 133 days of school this year. I do not know what happened to my missing student from four years ago, other than that the family moved to Queens, NY.
690 Saint Paul 