Roughly 25% of MCPS students are chronically absent, and absenteeism response plan delayed

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My daughter just graduated from MCPS, and hardly went to school. her pediatrician even understood why she did not want to be in that environment, with drugs, verbal assaults , requests to sext etc ......she basicaly taught herself. She refused to return to private school.

MCPS did nothing ! Other than the daily call from a robot telling me my kid was absent, yes, I already knew ......no attendance plan, no calls from the grade chair, absolutely nothing. And passed.

The decline in MCPS is staggering.

Here we have a parent who knows their kid skips school, does nothing about it, and then complains that MCPS doesn’t try harder to get them to go.

This is why teachers are quitting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My daughter just graduated from MCPS, and hardly went to school. her pediatrician even understood why she did not want to be in that environment, with drugs, verbal assaults , requests to sext etc ......she basicaly taught herself. She refused to return to private school.

MCPS did nothing ! Other than the daily call from a robot telling me my kid was absent, yes, I already knew ......no attendance plan, no calls from the grade chair, absolutely nothing. And passed.

The decline in MCPS is staggering.

It isn't a school system's job to make sure kids attend school. That's a parent's job and you failed her. MCPS should've failed her too. I can only imagine what colleges and employers think of MCPS students these days. If your kid earned a diploma by doing next to nothing, how can these stakeholders differentiate between her and students who actually do the work?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My daughter just graduated from MCPS, and hardly went to school. her pediatrician even understood why she did not want to be in that environment, with drugs, verbal assaults , requests to sext etc ......she basicaly taught herself. She refused to return to private school.

MCPS did nothing ! Other than the daily call from a robot telling me my kid was absent, yes, I already knew ......no attendance plan, no calls from the grade chair, absolutely nothing. And passed.

The decline in MCPS is staggering.

DP. The environment in the schools is the key. There will continue to be absences because well behaved kids are tired of the the disruptions. Why show up to a place with constant fights, yelling teachers, drug use in the bathrooms, etc? I give my kids mental health days off and I will continue to do so. They are still A and B students.

The absentee problem is not just with kids that "need" to be there. It seems many prefer missing days just for the break. MCPS helpfully provides the number of days that can be missed.

[Anonymous]

Drug use in the classrooms, not just bathrooms

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My daughter just graduated from MCPS, and hardly went to school. her pediatrician even understood why she did not want to be in that environment, with drugs, verbal assaults , requests to sext etc ......she basicaly taught herself. She refused to return to private school.

MCPS did nothing ! Other than the daily call from a robot telling me my kid was absent, yes, I already knew ......no attendance plan, no calls from the grade chair, absolutely nothing. And passed.

The decline in MCPS is staggering.

Here we have a parent who knows their kid skips school, does nothing about it, and then complains that MCPS doesn’t try harder to get them to go.

This is why teachers are quitting.

+1. Parent even said kid refused to go to Private school. So basically this is just a kid who wanted to homeschool and parents didn’t make that work so now want to blame MCPS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My daughter just graduated from MCPS, and hardly went to school. her pediatrician even understood why she did not want to be in that environment, with drugs, verbal assaults , requests to sext etc ......she basicaly taught herself. She refused to return to private school.

MCPS did nothing ! Other than the daily call from a robot telling me my kid was absent, yes, I already knew ......no attendance plan, no calls from the grade chair, absolutely nothing. And passed.

The decline in MCPS is staggering.

cool story bro.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Chronic student absenteeism and the lack of a MCPS response is the purpose of this thread. If you want to start a different thread regarding teacher absenteeism then please have at it. However, just like any employer, MCPS has to honor legitimate reasons for teachers are absent. As a PP pointed out, just because a teacher is not in the classroom doesn’t mean they are not performing another job duty for MCPS.

Likewise, students are allowed excused absences. Doctor appointment or dental appointments would classify as an excused absence and would require a parental or provider note.

For students who are considered chronically absent, is there data on the percentage of excused absences vs. not excused? How many students are considered to be habitually truant?

Any word on when MCPS hopes to have a plan for addressing this problem?

Schools and leadership teams are working on this issue. The data is not currently broken out by excused absence vs not executed. Nor does it break out whether a kid is chronically missing some classes vs the whole day vs leaving early.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:People, your kids missing school due to a handful of appointments are not who they are talking about. Students are missing 50+ days of school year after year and nothing happens. They are no consequences so they keep doing it.

Chronically absent is 10%, so 18days and it includes excused and I excused absences.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Chronic student absenteeism and the lack of a MCPS response is the purpose of this thread. If you want to start a different thread regarding teacher absenteeism then please have at it. However, just like any employer, MCPS has to honor legitimate reasons for teachers are absent. As a PP pointed out, just because a teacher is not in the classroom doesn’t mean they are not performing another job duty for MCPS.

Likewise, students are allowed excused absences. Doctor appointment or dental appointments would classify as an excused absence and would require a parental or provider note.

For students who are considered chronically absent, is there data on the percentage of excused absences vs. not excused? How many students are considered to be habitually truant?

Any word on when MCPS hopes to have a plan for addressing this problem?

Schools and leadership teams are working on this issue. The data is not currently broken out by excused absence vs not executed. Nor does it break out whether a kid is chronically missing some classes vs the whole day vs leaving early.

How can school leadership work on the issue without breaking out the data?

For example, if a particular class has more absences than the norm, wouldn’t it be necessary to figure out why? Wouldn’t finding out why the students were absent be necessary before proposing a solution?

MCPS also needs to review its attendance reporting practices to ensure schools are collecting the data mandated by MSDE. Notes should be on file for excused absences so data can be collected as to why students were not present when excused.

[Anonymous]

For my child, he had a teacher who simply didn’t take attendance accurately. I caught my child truant when I came home early one day but the school didn’t mark him absent. He learned that it was easy for him to ditch that particular class so I don’t know how often he had been skipping. He was grounded for the day he was caught and I reported the problem to the principal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People, your kids missing school due to a handful of appointments are not who they are talking about. Students are missing 50+ days of school year after year and nothing happens. They are no consequences so they keep doing it.

Chronically absent is 10%, so 18days and it includes excused and I excused absences.

We know that. They aren't worried about Susie who has to miss 1-2 hrs of school once a month to go to the orthodontist.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People, your kids missing school due to a handful of appointments are not who they are talking about. Students are missing 50+ days of school year after year and nothing happens. They are no consequences so they keep doing it.

Chronically absent is 10%, so 18days and it includes excused and I excused absences.

18 school days is 3 1/2 weeks of school. 25% of students are absent 3 1/2 weeks of school. This is at a time when students are not meeting state standards in math.

Any ideas from MCPS on how they are going to address the problem?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People, your kids missing school due to a handful of appointments are not who they are talking about. Students are missing 50+ days of school year after year and nothing happens. They are no consequences so they keep doing it.

Chronically absent is 10%, so 18days and it includes excused and I excused absences.

18 school days is 3 1/2 weeks of school. 25% of students are absent 3 1/2 weeks of school. This is at a time when students are not meeting state standards in math.

Any ideas from MCPS on how they are going to address the problem?

What are parents going to do about the problem? This is a parenting issue.

[Anonymous]

Send truancy officers after the parents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Would love to see some more nuanced data on this. Are they saying 18 full days? What do the parents say when contacted? How many can't be reached, versus how many say they didn't know, versus how many say that there was a good reason, versus how many say that their kid is out of control and there's nothing they can do?

At a lot of schools, the attendance records aren't accurate because subs don't keep them correctly or teachers can't correct them for tardies. Also some parents don't bother to write notes when a kid is coming in late after an orthodontist appointment or similar appointment, because no one really cares about that.

My understanding from our MCPS school is that this includes excused absences such as due to illness - meaning we were contacted about this for our elementary schooler who has only 2 unexcused absences the entire year (due to family travel) but 20 excused absences due to the constant illness circulating everywhere. So I’d like to see a better breakdown of how many kids are “chronically absent” based on unexcused absences before deciding whether this warrants the level of concern it seems to be provoking.

This. We also had a chronically ill student who missed a lot of days, based on my “sick note”. The problem was not me or our DD. It was the school, who, during an official 504 meeting, refused to accommodate her as a disabled student despite appropriate medical documentation, and (illegally) suggested she should drop some advanced classes and switch to “regular” classes.

This illegal disability discrimination, of course, caused frustration, depression and anxiety on her part. She did not need to be in school to keep up; she just needed consistant access to class assignments and appropriate accommodations.

Fortunately, we were knowledgeable enough about the law and the system that we were able to get the school to correct its decision but this kind of thing happened repeatedly in MS and HS. There was even a PPW present at one meeting who explained that our DD was not truant and pulled us aside privately and advised us to complain directly to the Superintendant.

Parents of lesser means and knowledge often cannot fight the system, and those are the kids who end up being truant - pushed away by the system itself. I have seen it happen repeatedly to others.