Intend to Attend: Hybrid Learning Presents Unique Challenges to Attendance Office Staff

As the usual morning rush of attendance hotline calls start pouring in, East’s attendance clerk Jody Gustafson is already swamped with truancy reports she has to send to administrators and letters from parents excusing their tardy students. 

In a normal year, Gustafson would be unfazed by the countless phone calls from parents and students. However, the switch to the hybrid learning model presents new challenges for the attendance staff at East, such as increased truancy rates — the crime of excessive academic absence — poor student-school communication and struggles with students attending their virtual seminar class.

“We’ve come up with a problem with students not checking into seminar like they’re supposed to,” Gustafson said. “Our job can be taxing at times when there are around 1,800 students to keep track of.”

Students that have not been checking into their seminar class during their asynchronous days for several days in a row have accumulated numerous absences in a very short amount of time, regardless of the amount of schoolwork they did that day. Once a student reaches 3 unexcused absences in a row, 5 unexcused days in a semester, or 7 days in a semester, counseling and administration refer the student to services through the district attorney. After that, the administration sends a statutory letter to parents notifying them that additional unexcused absences will be sent to the District Attorney, where further action will be decided. Though Gustafson cannot provide an exact percentage, she said that the numbers are trending much higher this year than almost any other year.

“Previously, [the attendance staff] would look through a report to find which kids had 10 or more absences, and who had already had a letter [sent] and who we might consider to send to truancy court and it was about an inch thick of just paperwork,” Assistant Principal Dr. Susan Leonard said. “That stack is about seven inches now.”

Leonard and the other attendance staff remark that even a “good” student can fall behind from the increased workload or just forget to attend seminar. Because of this, the truancy reports that administrators send out aren’t as reliable as they would be in an in-person school year. These skewed reports generate many unique issues, such as students receiving potentially inaccurate information and disputes over the classification of truancy.

“I know when the attendance staff has sent [the reports] because half of my day will be gone with calls to clarify this information to parents,” Leonard said.

Leonard and Gustafson are hopeful that switching to a fully in-person learning model will solve the attendance dilemma as well as provide some relief to the attendance staff in a tumultuous year.

“The thing that I’m most looking forward to is having the kids all back in school again,” Gustafson said. “I know it’s been hard on the students this year, and I think for everybody in the office we would prefer the students to all be here; I love seeing the kids, interacting with the students. I always like that.”