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School attendance policies are very strict, even for elementary schools. Makes me wonder about students who are unable to get to school safely or have to stay home and watch their siblings so their parents can work. These are not considered excused absences. And what about students whose parents aren't around/willing to write a note or call their school, even if their absence is technically excused?

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Benchmark Preschool and Elementary School attendance policy (Phoenix, Arizona)

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Benchmark Preschool and Elementary School attendance policy (Phoenix, Arizona)

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A very intense attendance policy for an elementary school/preschool. Requires a note or phone call from parents to be considered excused, and must fit into the criteria for excused absences. Also includes a tardy policy, 3 tardies = 1 unexcused absence. 3 unexcused absences = 7am detention.

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Attendance Policy - Parents - Benchmark Preschool & Elementary School

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Sweet Home School District attendance policy (Amherst, NY)

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Sweet Home School District attendance policy (Amherst, NY)

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Similar attendance policies to other schools, but includes interventions after a certain number of absences. This includes letters home, principal follow-ups, and if parents are unable/unwilling to communicate with the school, the student will have the choice to speak to a counselor about their absences and the circumstances behind them.

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All children in New York State ages 6 to 16 are required to attend school. Regular school attendance is a critical factor in student success. School attendance is both a right and a responsibility of all students.

The Sweet Home Central School District is an active partner with parents and students in ensuring that all students meet or exceed the New York State Learning Standards. To help reach that goal, the Sweet Home Central School District has adopted a Comprehensive Student Attendance Policy. Complete copies of the District Comprehensive Attendance Policy are available in the main offices of all district school buildings.

The New York State Education Department only considers the list below to be legal reasons for absence or tardiness:

* sickness or death in the family

* medical appointments

* counseling appointment

* road test or college exploration

* school sponsored activities

A written excuse is required of all students when they return to school from an absence or when tardy. Excuses should be written and signed by the parent/guardian, and include the reason for the absence/ tardy/early dismissal and specify the date(s) and time of the absence or tardiness. Early dismissal also requires a note from parents designating time, reason and means of transportation. Students should be picked up in the main office of the school.

A student who reaches 7 absences during the first marking period will be identified and a first intervention will be implemented. In the second quarter and thereafter, a letter is sent home to the parent/guardian of any student who reaches an absence rate of 15 percent or more for that point of the year. As of the 100th day and thereafter, a letter is sent to the parent/guardian of any student who has 15 absences or more. The second intervention is to be implemented when a student fails to maintain an attendance rate of 85% or better. After being identified, a building team will monitor the student's attendance and appropriate interventions will be taken.

A student who is absent due to a communicable disease will be readmitted only when all symptoms have subsided. A medical evaluation/note from a Health Care Provider may be required before returning to school. Please contact your child's school nurse for further direction.

A student who is absent due to a communicable disease will be readmitted only when all symptoms have subsided. A medical evaluation/note from a Health Care Provider may be required before returning to school. Please contact your child's school nurse.

All students are required to take physical education. Requests to be excused from elementary levels (Grades K-5) physical education classes for one week or less may be made with a note from the parent or a Health Care Provider. Exemptions beyond one week must be made in writing by a Health Care Provider. All requests to be excused from secondary level (Grades 6-12) physical education classes must be made in writing by a Health Care Provider.

All students are required to take physical education. Requests to be excused from elementary levels (Grades K-5) physical education classes for one week or less may be made with a note from the parent or a Health Care Provider. Exemptions beyond one week must be made in writing by a Health Care Provider. All requests to be excused from secondary level (Grades 6-12)physical education classes must be made in writing by a Health Care Provider.

Any student who will be absent from school for a lengthy period of time (typically one week at the elementary level and two weeks at the secondary level) because of illness or injury may be eligible for home instruction. Elementary students receive up to one hour of instruction each day and secondary students up to two hours. Parents should notify the school nurse at the elementary level and the school counselor at the secondary level immediately upon learning that a child faces prolonged absence. For further information about the Home Instruction program, please contact the Office of Special Programs at 250-1236.

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Attendance Policy * Page - Sweet Home Central School District

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All children in New York State ages 6 to 16 are required to attend school. Regular school attendance is a critical factor in student success. School attendance is both a right and a responsibility of all students.

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Stubbs Elementary School attendance policy (Wilmington, DE)

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Stubbs Elementary School attendance policy (Wilmington, DE)

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Emphasizes the importance of being on time stating, "One of the most valuable life skills a student can learn from his/her parent/guardian is the responsibility of arriving at school every day on time." Students will not receive credit for assignments or tests missed for an unexcused absence, and it is their job to ask their teacher to make them up.

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Tardiness, Attendance & Absence Policies

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Stubbs Elementary School serves K-5th grade students and is part of the Christina School District.

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Worthington Schools elementary attendance policy (Worthington, Ohio)

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Worthington Schools elementary attendance policy (Worthington, Ohio)

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Requires students to have a note explaining their absence(s). Gives a list of 6 absences legally allowed by the state of Ohio. If a student's absence is not considered legal, they may be denied the opportunity to make up missed work. States, "irregular attendance is the major reason for poor schoolwork"

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Elementary School Handbook / Attendance Policies

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The Board does not believe that students should be excused from school for non-emergency trips out of the District. Students who are taken out of school for trips or vacations are not given permission to do so by the school.

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This organization works with communities and schools across the country to help get kids to school and reduce absences. They help establish why chronic absences are an issue in a particular area and encourage communities, families, and schools to work together to help solve the problem. Discusses why school attendance policies aren't always realistic.

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In the 2020-21 school year, at least 10.1 million students nationwide were chronically absent. We estimate chronic absence has more than doubled from the more than 8 million students, pre-Covid-19, who were missing so many days of school that they were academically at risk. Chronic absence - missing 10 percent or more of school days due to absence for any reason-excused, unexcused absences and suspensions-can translate into students having difficulty learning to read by the third-grade, achieving in middle school, and graduating from high school. Read this research summary for more details.

Watch this video to find out how Attendance Works can help you reduce chronic absence.

Children living in poverty are two to three times more likely to be chronically absent-and face the most harm because their community lacks the resources to make up for the lost learning in school. Students from communities of color as well as those with disabilities are disproportionately affected.

This isn't simply a matter of truancy or skipping school. In fact, many of these absences, especially among our youngest students, are excused. Often absences are tied to health problems, such as asthma, diabetes, and oral and mental health issues. Other barriers including lack of a nearby school bus, a safe route to school or food insecurity make it difficult to go to school every day. In many cases, chronic absence goes unnoticed because schools are counting how many students show up every day rather than examining how many and which students miss so much school that they are falling behind. Read our blog about truancy and chronic absence.

While chronic absence presents academic challenges for students not in class, when it reaches high levels in a classroom or school, all students may suffer because the resulting classroom churn hampers teachers' ability to engage all students and meet their learning needs.

The good news is that our work throughout the country shows us that chronic absence is a solvable problem. What works is taking a data-driven, comprehensive approach that begins with engaging students and families as well as preventing absences from adding up before they fall behind academically. The key is using chronic absence data as a diagnostic tool to identify where prevention and early intervention are needed.

With this data in hand, schools, families and community partners can together determine the causes of chronic absence, and implement approaches that address barriers to getting to class. The federal Every Student Succeeds Act requires districts and states to collect chronic absence data and report it publicly. The majority of states have adopted chronic absence as a measure for school accountability.

The challenge of improving attendance is to avoid making the incorrect assumption that chronically absent students or their parents simply do not care. By working together, all of us - schools, public officials, public agencies, civic organizations, businesses, philanthropic groups, families and students - can ensure all children can get to school every day so they have an opportunity to learn, flourish and realize their dreams.
Find out more about Chronic Absence by choosing a section in the menu at right.

More from Attendance Works

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In the 2020-21 school year, at least 10.1 million students nationwide were chronically absent. We estimate chronic absence has more than doubled from the more than 8 million students, pre-Covid-19, who were missing so many days of school that they were academically at risk.

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The Attendance Work site basically states that everything in the educationworld is the wrong way to go about handling chronic absences.

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Chronic absences can have a negative affect on school performance. Schools across the country are trying to fix this problem by creating stricter attendance policies. Some even fined their students/families if a student is "chronically truant."

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From time to time, Education World updates and reposts a previously published article that we think might be of interest to administrators. We hope you find this recently updated article to be of value.

Cracking down on truancy is a growing concern for many administrators, as requirements increase and evidence mounts that children who are in school consistently learn more than students who are absent. Education World talked with administrators in several districts who use everything from fines to rewards to keep kids in school. Included: Descriptions of attendance policies in four school systems.

Stricter attendance policies -- with consequences for truancy ranging from lower grade point averages to fines and jail time for parents -- are paying off in several school districts Education World contacted.

Policy changes in the districts Education World researched were prompted by declining daily attendance and the belief by administrators that the more time students are in school, the better chance they have of improving academically. And with annual assessments coming up, teachers need as much time as possible to prepare their students.

"We feel student achievement is at a higher rate when students are in school regularly," said Beth Shields, deputy superintendent for instruction in the School District of Hillsborough County, Florida. "Students who miss a lot of school get into trouble and can have serious social problems."

PAYING THE PRICE

William Collins, principal of Naugatuck High School in Naugatuck, Connecticut, also saw the connection between attendance and performance and wanted to do more to get students in school. Now the town will be able to hit truant students and their parents in their pocketbooks.

The town's governing body passed a law February 5 that allows police officers to issue fines of $25 a day to any students who are chronically truant, to their parents, or to both. The law became effective February 26. Officers also can issue tickets to students if they see them on the streets during the school day.

The fines are a last step if parents fail to respond to calls and letters from the district's attendance officer, Collins told Education World.

Collins, who became the high school principal in August, hired an attendance officer after he noticed that some students had missed as many as ten days of school by mid-October. The daily attendance rate for the school, which has 1,600 students, is about 90 percent.

Now the attendance officer reviews attendance figures every day and calls and sends a letter to the parents of any student with four unexcused absences in a month. At the high school, administrators meet with the truant students and refer them to the student assistance team.

Parents are told to contact the school within five days of receiving the letter; if they don't, that could lead to fines, a referral to court, or both, Collins said.

"We have some parents who allow their kids to stay home excessively," he said.

Collins said he also has proof that attendance makes a difference; when the first quarter grades came out, he noted that 90 percent of the students who had been truant frequently were failing at least one course.

"Some kids don't understand how quickly the days add up," he said. "And some just don't buy into school."

To help all students feel more comfortable at school, Naugatuck High is starting a program for all freshmen beginning next year. The students will be in a separate area of the building and assigned to one group of teachers. "It will be a very structured program," Collins said. "It is to help them build relationships with teachers, other adults, and other students."

NO MORE EXCUSES

Hillsborough County revised its policy in the 1997-1998 school year, and has noticed a difference. Daily attendance in the 170,000-student district went from 92 percent in 1997-1998 to 94 percent by October 2001, according to Shields. The biggest increases were seen in the middle and high schools; middle school attendance rates went from 88.6 percent in 1997-98 to 93.5 percent in October 2001. For the high schools, the figures went from 88.7 percent to 92.6 percent.

Persistence by staff helps make the policy successful. "We call parents every day if we don't hear from them [to say their child is absent]," said Ken Gaughan, supervisor of school social work services for the county. "The first time, we try to understand what we are dealing with."

Under the old policy, students who were absent 15 days in a semester would fail, said Shields, but some students had valid excuses for missing school.

Now middle and high school students get points added to their average if they have four or fewer excused absences in a nine-week period. Those with unexcused absences get zeros for any tests that day, and lose two points off their class average.

District officials have gone as far as taking parents of delinquent students to court, and some parents have received jail time. In 2000-2001, 37 parents were taken to court, compared with 42 the prior year, said Gaughan. "It's not something we relish," he added. "But sometimes, we've exhausted every avenue."

Most of the truancy cases involve elementary school students, according to Gaughan, and in those cases, school staff try to work with the family. "We don't see [truancy] as an isolated issue," he said. "We try to evaluate the family and see if we can help."

CRACKING DOWN IN THE HEARTLAND

The Minneapolis school district also has turned to a multi-pronged approach to curb truancy. Its new policy was launched in September 2001, after a year of planning and holding community meetings.

"Parents have been thanking us for making the policy clear and standardizing it," Jacqueline Turner, the school's director of public relations, told Education World. "Before, the policy varied from school to school. Kids were saying, 'Why come to school if there are no consequences for not coming?'"

Prior to the new policy, the district never specified the number of absences a student was allowed, nor did it define an excused absence.

Secondary students with four or more unexcused absences from a class per semester now risk failing the class. However, before students are marked failing, school officials must show that they have

held discussions with the student after the first and subsequent unexcused absences,

had personal contact with a parent or guardian,

developed an improvement plan with time for the student to implement it, and

referred the student for interventions within the school.

In the case of elementary students, they are given the chance to make up missed work, and school officials work with families to help improve attendance.

District results so far are positive. In January 2001, only 56 percent of the district's 50,000 students made the district goal of attending school 95 percent of the time. As of the first quarter of this school year, the figure had improved to 62 percent.

"People are paying more attention to attendance," said Merle Belle-Gonzales, the district's attendance office director. "At least everyone is aware of what the policy is and can make wise choices and learn the benefits of attending school."

Middle and high school students who miss three or more class periods or school days in a semester must appear before a school attendance review board, which includes school staff, community members, and local agency members. Students have to explain to the board how they plan to improve their attendance.

Paul McMahon, the principal of Patrick Henry High School in Minneapolis, said his school had tightened its attendance policy prior to the district-wide initiative. Although McMahon describes the policy as very labor-intensive, he said it is worth it. "When we made the policy clear, offered support, and had consequences, it made a difference," he told Education World. "We've been seeing more students on track to graduate and more enrolled in higher-level courses."

"Students have someone else out there who cares if they are in school," said Winter.

RURAL SCHOOLS TAKE STEPS

Knox County (Kentucky) school district officials also were not happy with attendance figures in their rural school district a few years ago, particularly at the high school level. "We felt like we had to tighten up," Robin Smith, the director of pupil personnel services, said.

So officials did, starting last school year, and with quick results. In the first year, attendance at one high school improved by 5 percent, Smith said.

Before the new policy was adopted, administrators did not take action until a student had nine unexcused absences. At that point, the principal would contact the director of pupil personnel services and court proceedings could begin.

Under the new policy, teachers notify principals after a student's third unexcused absence. If students continue to be absent, parents are notified by the fifth unexcused absence. When the number reaches six, the principal notifies Smith, who sends a notice to parents. At that point, the student and family have 24 hours to contact them and explain how they are going to correct the situation, or face court action.

At the elementary level, action usually is taken before the third absence; staff at many of the schools call parents every day a child is absent without an excuse.

"Finally, we are getting the message out to parents," Smith said.

The district also has attendance incentives for students, such as school dances and passes to athletic events for high school students and treats for elementary school students.

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From time to time, Education World updates and reposts a previously published article that we think might be of interest to administrators. We hope you find this recently updated article to be of value. Cracking down on truancy is a growing concern for many administrators, as requirements increase and evidence mounts that children who are in school consistently learn more than students who are absent.

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Pretty much every article or attendance policy here states academic failure as the reason behind strict attendance policies. If the school wants students to be academically successful, they should help students get to the classroom through whatever means necessary. If that is not possible, work with them to make sure they stay afloat academically, while also making sure their mental health becomes/remains well.

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This document outlines how to handle chronic absences. In most cases, a letter home is enough. However, it suggests that in some situations students may need help from the school and community or other resources outside their family.