Amid Creek’s ongoing campaign against chronic student absence, district administration is introducing a new amendment to an existing policy.
The plan is aimed at reducing student absence under the guise of medical ailments as a means to skip class.
“This policy has been in effect for a while,” Dean Brock Felchle said. “[Its execution] is what’s being changed.”
The revised policy is as follows: once a student has met or surpassed ten accumulated days of absence, they will receive an attendance letter or notification from the district. The first letter is treated as a warning. When a student has met or surpassed 15 accumulated days of absence, they will receive another attendance letter from the district.
“The district has taken over these steps in the attendance process.” Felchle said. “They are the ones who send out the attendance concern letters.”
Once this second letter has been received, the district will contact the student’s parents, letting them know that the student will have to provide doctor’s notes or proof of illness if they miss classes again for a medical reason. This means that if a student with over 15 absences does not provide a doctor’s note following additional absences, they will remain marked as unexcused.
This new practice is part of a district-wide initiative to curtail chronic student absence.
“There’s been an uptick in students missing school since COVID,” Felchle said. “Across the country there has been a huge increase in absence rates, and we’re trying to get students back into school on a regular basis.”
Consequences for excessive absenteeism (defined by 30 accumulated days of absence) include a compulsory meeting with the Student Attendance Review (SAR) board or a potential referral for truancy court.
“Once a student gets to a point where they’ve been placed on doctor’s notes and there are still concerns around absenteeism, we refer a student through our SAR process,” Dean Natasha Utterback said. “The first step is [to meet] with our district attorney, the [student’s] family, and the dean, and then the goal is to try to find ways to support the student and the family in getting the student to come to school.”
Truancy court is a legal action taken to ensure that students who have excessive absences in the grade book (four unexcused absences in a month, ten in a year per the truancy court guidelines) will return to classes. Often it is under the jurisdiction of the county court, and it aims to address the root causes of the student’s absence issue. But this is regarded as the absolute last resort.
The recommended method to avoid receiving the first (or second) letter is to provide medical documentation anyway, even if the student has not received an attendance alert.
“Unfortunately, we as a school cannot excuse the absence after a student reaches the threshold of 15 or more school days,” Felchle said. “It doesn’t matter if [the student] is excused or unexcused at that point.”
