With the second semester passing by and summer getting closer, students are starting to take their attendance less seriously. With graduation coming up for seniors, steps are being taken in order to address the recurring issue of increased absences.
Dean of Students Tyrone Robinson Jr., has been handling this issue for several years and highlighted the problems of poor attendance and truancy.
He added that seniors starting to let loose with certain freedoms such as attendance towards the end of the year is inevitable since they are about to graduate.
“I believe they’re just exhausted and it’s senior year,” Robinson said.“As you get older, you’re really pumped about being out of here and you start to take liberties you probably wouldn’t take.”
Many teachers also acknowledge the issue of absences in their classes and how it causes students to fall behind.
English and Advanced Placement (AP) Capstone teacher Emily LaTourrette said how the attendance patterns have changed since the coronavirus pandemic.
“Before Covid and right after Covid, it seemed like attendance was the worst it’s been,” LaTourrette said. “The school has been trying every year to improve the system for increasing better attendance.”
Even with the school trying to prevent students from cutting class, there is still a loophole with excused absences
“As a teacher, one of the biggest challenges I found is the amount of excused absences, especially for seniors,” LaTourrette said. “But I would say this year, it feels like an uptick again in the number of excused absences and that as a teacher, is really hard because it doesn’t necessarily show up the same in the system or trigger the same interventions.”
LaTourette also understands how poor attendance, excused or not, can be a result of students struggling with their mental health, but missing school can make those issues like anxiety much worse, causing a cycle that is hard to get out of.
“If you get behind, or you miss a day or two, students who are inclined to have anxiety or increased stress, it compounds that,” LaTourette said. “Sometimes students might even be missing class due to those reasons and that’s really challenging.”
AP World History Teacher Corin Greenberg, said that missing school can also cause students’ workloads to quickly build up, especially in an AP class.
“In AP classes, there’s a lot that happens in a class period, so just missing one AP class period can be a lot. If you’re missing a lot of them, it can become almost untenable, so that can be very tricky,” Greenberg said.
As graduation approaches, repercussions are being put in place for students with a large amount of absences. While commonly misinterpreted as a sort of detention or punishment, “Saturday school” is a chance to redeem one’s absences.
“Saturday school is attendance recovery,” Robinson said. “Attendance recovery is a state approved program that just happened this year. It gives schools and students an opportunity in the event that you did exceed your 18 days for chronic absenteeism, or you were having a rough go in some class you were skipping for a while.”
He said that attendance recovery gives kids a second chance to take part in things like prom and graduation.
“As people, we all make mistakes. Mistakes are an opportunity to be great, because now you can say you’re sorry, move on, and redeem yourself by coming to this and earning your time back,” Robinson said.
