Pointless attendance reminders

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Teacher here. Attendance is meaningless these days. I had a student last year miss almost her entire senior year of school. No good reason for it either. Turned in a few half-assed assignments in the first week of June and the school let her graduate

Teacher PP. What are your thoughts on this article about MCPS? Am I right to understand that the BOE is too hands off and central office policies are well-intentioned but ultimately, damaging to county attendance?

Bethesda Magazine: "Is MCPS losing its edge?"
https://moco360.media/september-october-2024-digital-edition/

I liked the article. I think it did a good job summarising some of the big issues. BOE is too far away from what is actually happening in schools. I assume that central office is well meaning but I have not been impressed by most central office people. They don’t seem to care about teachers or students. It is more about preserving the positive image of MCPS and trying to keep MCPS from being sued. And they are doing a lousy job of both of those things

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Another perspective- The impact of excessive absence can be the same whether excused or unexcused. For example, let’s say a student has a medical issue (mental or physical) come up and that starts to result in many excused absences. This student is still missing valuable class time. If they are studious, they now are trying to makeup missed work and learning while trying to stay on top of new learning and work. If MCPS is made aware that something is going on, they can work with the family and school system to come up with a plan that may reduce the student’s burden. For example, their teachers could ensure they get packets of the weeks work ahead of time. They could schedule tutoring sessions. They could change the students schedule for the short or long term so medical appointments could be more easily scheduled and the student not have to miss class. Etc…

As someone also pointed out, some parents may not be aware that their kid is missing school days or particular parts of school days.

While the system isn’t perfect and can likely use tweaks,it’s an attempt to inform parents of an issue that impacts their kids learning and potential to do well while also reaching out to understand the potential cause of the absenteeism.

So while you can say my kid had the flu one week and the Covid the next but overall is fine and doing well, that same fact is not true for All.

I agree with your point, but the trigger for the email/text (I received both) seems too low. She missed three days (all excused) in a quarter. That's pretty normal if a kid has COVID, flu, a bad virus -- pretty much anything. Asking me if there's anything MCPS can do to get my kid to attend class more when she missed three days seems just totally pointless. If you had a kid that was missing 15 days in a quarter, yeah, I can see where perhaps MCPS might be able to provide the family with some assistance either in attendance or in-home/virtual teaching. But I also suspect that it's sort of an empty offer for assistance, because I don't think there is much that MCPS can provide to families that are struggling to get their kids to school.

I really don't mean to be critical of MCPS -- I'm actually a much bigger fan of the school system than most posters on this board. But I am a big critic of their PR/Comms department, which seems to just entirely make a lot of work for themselves sending out messages that are pointless and not useful to anyone. Whatever they are paying those people, I'd prefer they fire them, and use the money to pay teachers.

I do think that the alerts telling you your child was not in school are helpful -- even though they are wrong at least 50% of the time, at least it's a way to alert parents that there may be a ditching problem that they don't know about (or possibly that they forgot to send in the note for illness). The messages I was complaining about are NOT the "your child was absent for one or more periods today" messages, but rather the "Larla has missed 3 days of school this quarter. This includes both excused and unexcused absences. How can we help?" (the message then goes on to lecture me about how all absences, even for illness, mean missed instructional time....).

I can understand where you’re coming from with it only being 3 days. And clearly you’re in top of things so your kid is likely not the problem. However, I can also understand the trigger being set low at 3-5 days. As another poster noted the state threshold for chronic absenteeism is 10%, which is 18days. A student need only be absent 3-4 days/per quarter to reach that. So if you’re trying to help intervene early to reduce absenteeism what would be the appropriate threshold? At what point in the year should they start to really pay attention? How do they distinguish you who doesn’t need more attention/awareness from Larlo’s family who does?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Does anyone find these texts and emails from MCPS about excused absences to be at all useful? I can't imagine there's a parent out there saying "Oh, I didn't care if my kid went to school, but now that I've received this text, I will care!"

My kid caught COVID at school so missed several days, was back for a week or two and then caught the respiratory illness that everyone in her classes has, so is out again. The text notes that she has missed three days this quarter and asks if there is anything MCPS can do to ensure she goes to school....she's in a school with like a thousand kids, with basically no ventilation, each day she is exposed to hundreds of different kids, there's almost no opportunity to wash your hands because the teachers don't like the kids to go to the bathrooms....so, yeah, she's going to get sick.

I really hope they are not spending any money at all on this text/email system. If anyone from MCPS is reading, please know that I just find this annoying.

My goodness! Is there anything y'all do not complain about?
Doom if they do, doom if they don’t. Y'all MCPS parents are the worst.

+1 If this is what qualifies as a problem in their lives, they should drop to their knees and thank God.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Does anyone find these texts and emails from MCPS about excused absences to be at all useful? I can't imagine there's a parent out there saying "Oh, I didn't care if my kid went to school, but now that I've received this text, I will care!"

My kid caught COVID at school so missed several days, was back for a week or two and then caught the respiratory illness that everyone in her classes has, so is out again. The text notes that she has missed three days this quarter and asks if there is anything MCPS can do to ensure she goes to school....she's in a school with like a thousand kids, with basically no ventilation, each day she is exposed to hundreds of different kids, there's almost no opportunity to wash your hands because the teachers don't like the kids to go to the bathrooms....so, yeah, she's going to get sick.

I really hope they are not spending any money at all on this text/email system. If anyone from MCPS is reading, please know that I just find this annoying.

Yep annoying. And we laughed when we got that NOTE for our kid in MS. It seemed the whole grade had been out ill those 2-3 weeks. Sheesh it's middle school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Does anyone find these texts and emails from MCPS about excused absences to be at all useful? I can't imagine there's a parent out there saying "Oh, I didn't care if my kid went to school, but now that I've received this text, I will care!"

My kid caught COVID at school so missed several days, was back for a week or two and then caught the respiratory illness that everyone in her classes has, so is out again. The text notes that she has missed three days this quarter and asks if there is anything MCPS can do to ensure she goes to school....she's in a school with like a thousand kids, with basically no ventilation, each day she is exposed to hundreds of different kids, there's almost no opportunity to wash your hands because the teachers don't like the kids to go to the bathrooms....so, yeah, she's going to get sick.

I really hope they are not spending any money at all on this text/email system. If anyone from MCPS is reading, please know that I just find this annoying.

My goodness! Is there anything y'all do not complain about?
Doom if they do, doom if they don’t. Y'all MCPS parents are the worst.

Spoken like a MCPS parent herself!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I really wish they would screen out excused absences from these messages. My teen missed four days because they had pneumonia. Doctor’s note submitted, absences excused, and yet here’s the email anyways.

The MCPS attendance "system," if you can even refer to it as such, is held together with string, tape and Band-Aids. It's a joke.

+1. It is a joke. I work at an MCPS HS and kids will be calling in sick tomorrow since it’s a half day.

[Anonymous]

At least attendance person at the school is not like Central office staff. The latter need serious customer service training. Taylor - another part of your job you need to immediately look into. If you ever need to call Central (hopefully never), CO will ask for your name and number but never contact you back. What do they do? They are there to "tell on" the caller. If parents already had an answer from the schools, why the F would we call Central Office? Obviously, if a call is made to CO, it is because clarification or a decision that could not be made at the school level is needed from CO.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:At least attendance person at the school is not like Central office staff. The latter need serious customer service training. Taylor - another part of your job you need to immediately look into. If you ever need to call Central (hopefully never), CO will ask for your name and number but never contact you back. What do they do? They are there to "tell on" the caller. If parents already had an answer from the schools, why the F would we call Central Office? Obviously, if a call is made to CO, it is because clarification or a decision that could not be made at the school level is needed from CO.

They should implement a service request ticket system. You have question, or a request, complete a form. they (not sure which office within CO) replies or completes the request and you get a confirmation email or text saying request was completed, or they call you if something isn't clear. Treat parents/students/staff/county tax paying residents with the same customer service you would expect when you call a company's customer service department.

[Anonymous]

I got the notification too. My child missed 3 days straight for a COVID/flu like illness. Their only absence this year. I sent a note prior to the notification so they knew it was excused and for one single illness. They should really distinguish between this type of situation and true excessive absences. I feel it discourages parents from keeping sick kids home.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I got the notification too. My child missed 3 days straight for a COVID/flu like illness. Their only absence this year. I sent a note prior to the notification so they knew it was excused and for one single illness. They should really distinguish between this type of situation and true excessive absences. I feel it discourages parents from keeping sick kids home.

PP, it's all for optics: "our mcps students have a fabulous attendance rate!" type of image they are going for.

[Anonymous]

You can't really communicate anything without being paranoid that mcps will hold it against staff. We were not even allowed to communicate our true hours on our time sheets. We were forced to make up false numbers and disregard the true data. It's like they dont want the truth as to how much they are exploiting staff written down on paper.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Teacher here. Attendance is meaningless these days. I had a student last year miss almost her entire senior year of school. No good reason for it either. Turned in a few half-assed assignments in the first week of June and the school let her graduate

Teacher PP. What are your thoughts on this article about MCPS? Am I right to understand that the BOE is too hands off and central office policies are well-intentioned but ultimately, damaging to county attendance?

Bethesda Magazine: "Is MCPS losing its edge?"
https://moco360.media/september-october-2024-digital-edition/

I liked the article. I think it did a good job summarising some of the big issues. BOE is too far away from what is actually happening in schools. I assume that central office is well meaning but I have not been impressed by most central office people. They don’t seem to care about teachers or students. It is more about preserving the positive image of MCPS and trying to keep MCPS from being sued. And they are doing a lousy job of both of those things

Add on the fact that progs can't identify most of MCPS's actual problems because racism and MCPS is like an alcoholic that refuses to admit there's a problem.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You can't really communicate anything without being paranoid that mcps will hold it against staff. We were not even allowed to communicate our true hours on our time sheets. We were forced to make up false numbers and disregard the true data. It's like they dont want the truth as to how much they are exploiting staff written down on paper.

The easy way to solve this problem is write the correct hours or don’t work the extra hours.