This data would be much more meaningful if they separated out excused vs unexcused absences. Not much to do about kids missing school due to illness, but other kinds of absences can be addressed.

I wonder if there are air quality or mold issues at any of the schools? Or if some schools have had more outbreaks of various things? This year I believe I've seen more letters from the health department about high levels of various illnesses than in prior years.

One of my ES kids is very close to hitting 18 absences this year. We traveled for a couple days around a holiday but all other absences were due to illnesses. Last year I was sure this child hit the chronic absenteeism threshold, but they were slightly under it.

Please god don’t let them create jobs at Syphax to address chronic absenteeism. I feel like he IDs some issue, hires a bunch of people who then justify their jobs by making the very problem worse.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some teens work to help support their families, or take care of younger siblings.

And the middle and elementary absenteeism rates are the younger siblings the teens are home taking care of?

I'm a middle school teacher and some of my students stay home when their younger siblings are sick because the parents have to work. I could believe it happens with 6th graders too.

"some." yeah. 18 times? And how many of the chronically absent students are home because of that?