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

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kids teachers are absent routinely. Kids not so much.

Do you know why? Are you assuming they are absent because they want to take personal days off? I’m absent a lot so I can take my mother to her chemo treatments. My colleague was absent a lot because she had a high risk pregnancy. Others are absent because they send teachers to a lot of trainings/PDs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kids teachers are absent routinely. Kids not so much.

Do you know why? Are you assuming they are absent because they want to take personal days off? I’m absent a lot so I can take my mother to her chemo treatments. My colleague was absent a lot because she had a high risk pregnancy. Others are absent because they send teachers to a lot of trainings/PDs.

Don't forget IEP meetings.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our former principal made teachers document one attempt per day per student who was absent even though there were automatic robocalls. So if 4 kids were absent on Monday and they didn't return on Tuesday, I had to call all 4 parents and then document each call in a spreadsheet that was shared with admin. You can imagine how time consuming this became when appr. 60-70% of my students were chronically absent.

Why couldn’t the attendance secretary and an intern make these calls and keep the spreadsheet everyday?

What intern? Our secretary is busy all day long and wouldn't have time to make all of these calls.

In our ES we have two secretaries. One called the Administrative Secretary and the other the Attendance Secretary. Now they are both busy all day, but if we are working on chronic absenteeism and making call a multiple times, it would make logical sense that the Attendance Secretary would be involved.

Similarly, at the HS, there are two-three secretaries, plus an Attendance secretary. And there are kids that are in the office that will go get a student if the teacher doesn’t pick up the phone or the kid doesn’t come down on their on based on an agreed upon time. Again, these folks all look busy (except the students)and I’m not sure what they are doing but would logically assume the attendance or someone would be involved in this process of tracking down kids/making parents aware.

This of course may not be the case, but may explain why parents are confused why this work is being placed on teachers alone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kids teachers are absent routinely. Kids not so much.

Do you know why? Are you assuming they are absent because they want to take personal days off? I’m absent a lot so I can take my mother to her chemo treatments. My colleague was absent a lot because she had a high risk pregnancy. Others are absent because they send teachers to a lot of trainings/PDs.

We had two teachers out at least twice a week. If they taught one class a week we were lucky. Subs did nothing.

[Anonymous]

Even better, we have kids to physically come to school but will not go to class so they walk the hallways all day and admin does nothing.

[Anonymous]

How ironic that this thread is right next to this one:

https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1148376.page

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How ironic that this thread is right next to this one:

https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1148376.page

Yes! I had a student miss the entire first week of school for family vacation, the last week before winter break for a cruise, and then another week in late winter/spring. No older siblings ing a college schedule. Parents didn’t care about what concerts, trips, or assignments he was missing.

I have another student that always takes vacation the week before winter break because the parents “never thought any instruction happened that week”. Really demoralizing as a teacher. I would love to see my family around every holiday as well, but I don’t get that many days off during the school year.

[Anonymous]

I don't know why parents just try to be a decent example and say jet we wait until we get a couple months off for vacation. How would your kid feel if you get fired for wanting to take a vacation when you were suppoe to be at work?

[Anonymous]

I hear this is because many families take unofficial vacations during the school year to places like Disney.

[Anonymous]

Newer thread "MCPS Announces New Attendance Plan and Policy on 8/22": https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/165/1150838.page#25652097

[Anonymous]

County Council held a session on chronic absenteeism. Here's the full session if you have the patience to sit through it:

A few key takeaways:

- MCPS does everything in its power to ignore and lock the other way at absenteeism and truancy
- There's a cap on the number of kids who can be sent to State's Attorney Truancy Prevention Program and that number is 10
- MCPS does not feel like students bear responsibility or accountability for the increase in absenteeism and truancy. They are perpetual victims and teachers and the school system just have to work harder at forging relationships, especially antiracist ones
- MCPS completely avoided and skirted mentioning how their decision, post-pandemic, to not enforce attendance policies put fuel on the fire of the absenteeism crisis. Dawn went after them a little on this but Mr. Neff dodged and answered on a technicality by saying that there were referrals to the TRB post-pandemic, which wasn't the question she was asking.

[Anonymous]

For those who don't have the patience for the full session, WJLA did a report that recaps the most important bits: https://wjla.com/news/local/mcps-montgomery-coounty-leaders-data-chronic-absenteeism-pandemic-covid-19-pandemic-students-teachers-education-days-missed-attendance-rate-down-health-crisis-in-person-learning#

7News asked MCPS if absenteeism declined overall this year, why do test scores remain low?

An MCPS communications representative emailed us back without answering that question and others.

At Monday's council meeting, school system leaders provided insight into what's fueling chronic absenteeism.

"This cuts across socioeconomic status, grade point average, what have you," Monteleone said.

He and Neff pointed to online learning shifting perceptions of in-person learning, the youth health crisis, students not seeing themselves as part of the school community, and some students viewing school as a luxury due to having to choose between learning or supporting their family.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For those who don't have the patience for the full session, WJLA did a report that recaps the most important bits: https://wjla.com/news/local/mcps-montgomery-coounty-leaders-data-chronic-absenteeism-pandemic-covid-19-pandemic-students-teachers-education-days-missed-attendance-rate-down-health-crisis-in-person-learning#

7News asked MCPS if absenteeism declined overall this year, why do test scores remain low?

An MCPS communications representative emailed us back without answering that question and others.

At Monday's council meeting, school system leaders provided insight into what's fueling chronic absenteeism.

"This cuts across socioeconomic status, grade point average, what have you," Monteleone said.

He and Neff pointed to online learning shifting perceptions of in-person learning, the youth health crisis, students not seeing themselves as part of the school community, and some students viewing school as a luxury due to having to choose between learning or supporting their family.

[Anonymous]

Steve Austin - accept your loss and please go away. Everyday you post some fake news alarmist title to try and convince people you should have won for school board. It’s not working.

[Anonymous]

Alas, mcps will never be able to adequately address the problem if they refuse to admit the underlying issues.

ICYMI: we have a big and growing immigrant population that includes teens who need to/prefer to work rather than go to school. Some of these teen boys don’t live with their parents who arent even in this country. Some are involved in criminal activity. Newsflash: they will never come to school everyday…which I believe is why you are opting for the unenroll policy…to get them off your books. Fair.

But that problem is different from when families yank their kids out to travel to another country to visit relatives/go to funerals/whatever. And it isn’t the same as when we travel for fun when it’s affordable.

And ICYMI: good parents keep their sick kids at home. Do you really want us sending sick kids to school?

It should be rather obvious who wants an education and who doesn’t. Start there, and don’t be daft.