School Is In Session: East is using the new position of an attendance specialist and preventative measures to try and bring levels of chronic absenteeism down

The Shawnee Mission School District is working to meet a goal of lowering chronic absences down from 22% of students in each school to 12%  by the end of this year. To meet the goal East is using preventative approaches, such as truancy warning letters, checking in with students when patterns in lack of attendance begin and positive reinforcement when attendance is achieved.

Senior Hartley Graham is a chronically absent student at East and received a letter in the mail from the school warning her on Oct. 8 that she was almost truant after missing 46 class periods this year. The letter outlined that proof of documentation, such as a doctor’s note would be required if Graham were to miss any more school this semester.

The majority of Graham’s absences are due to her Eosinophilic Esophagitis — an allergic condition that causes the esophagus to become inflamed and not contract properly. After the letter, Graham gave the attendance office a doctor’s note, but she’s also now making an effort to reduce her absences when possible.

“I’ve definitely been trying to get to school more since the letter,”  Graham said. “ My parents have been pushing me to go to school more also.”  

Though Graham’s circumstances can be considered unique, she still is part of the one-fifth of students who are chronically absent, meaning that they’ve missed 10% or more of the school days this year.

“Last year, chronic absenteeism was nationally declared a public health crisis,” SMSD Chief of Student Services Dr. Christy Ziegler said. “So it’s not just a Shawnee Mission problem, it’s happening everywhere, and it’s progressively gotten worse. So 12% is where we were well before the pandemic.”

The district has created a new job position of attendance specialists, with one assigned for each feeder pattern to specifically help track and prevent absenteeism. The East attendance specialist, Tabitha Stout, currently identifies patterns in absences and works with students, parents and staff to understand the root cause of individual students’ absences.

Stout handles both excused and unexcused absences, but she doesn’t typically work with students whose main cause of chronic absence is sickness.  

According to Ziegler, to help reduce absences and give students more support as well as accountability, the district has started to do “attendance contracts,” which lay out the student’s circumstances for missing school, along with a check-in plan where attendance specialists will continuously reach out to students to see how they’re doing with maintaining attendance. 

“I try to start with the students first, just to give them the opportunity to chat through things with me,” Stout said. “We oftentimes set goals to help improve attendance, and that seems to be pretty effective. If, for whatever reason, we’re still continuing to have problems, I’ll work with parents to get an understanding from their point of view, and then we loop in resources as needed.” 

According to both Ziegler and Stout, this communication and collaboration is supposed to help properly identify why kids are not coming to school and “intervene” before students become truant.

Though each student can have individual circumstances, unexcused absences typically stem from lack of transportation due to some families having kids in multiple siblings that start at different times. However, according to Ziegler, mental health has also become a bigger factor in chronic absenteeism.

“A lot of it comes down to if students feel like they belong in their schools, and are they connected,” Ziegler said. “And if that’s not the case, and that’s part of the aversion that they don’t feel like they have a connection point. How can we make that better?”

Stout and other attendance specialists use the “attendance contact” to help and build a connection and in-person relationship with chronically absent kids, but she also tries to reach out to students who initially struggled with absences and has been much more present to congratulate them and continue to offer her support. 

“I think it’s important that students and parents understand and know that we aren’t necessarily policing attendance,” Stout said. “We’re trying to collaborate and partner with students and families to make sure everybody’s set up for success. And so hopefully that will be evident as time proves those things out.”