School looks to curb chronic absenteeism

Dana Sprinkle, assistant superintendent of teaching and learning, said a student who is chronically absent is one who misses 10% or more of the school days. 

“Abilene usually has about 173 school days, give or take a few because of snow days or things that get called off because of ice or water problems or whatever,” Sprinkle said. “If a student misses 17 days of school, for whatever reason, that would be 10% of our school days, and that means they would be chronically absent.”

The district has records of chronic absenteeism from 2016 onward. In 2016, 9.96% of the students had chronic absenteeism compared to the state average of 12.04%. In 2017 with 15.94%, Abilene surpassed the state average of 13.01%. In 2018, the local average went down to 11.60%, while the state average went up to 13.20%. In 2019 and 2020 Abilene was at 10.75% and 10.76% respectively, remaining below the state’s 13.18% and 13.90%. 

Then the pandemic hit. 

State and local percentages went up. In 2021 at 18.78%, Abilene surpassed the state’s 17.50%. In 2022, the percent of Abilene students with chronic absenteeism soared to 23.38% while the state reached 25.42%.

“We’ve had illnesses and regulations that were impacting attendance because of students that would have to be quarantined or have to be out of school for a specified amount of time,” Sprinkle said. “We had decisions made at a state level that we all needed to move to remote learning for a period of time. That probably increased the number of absences. Our percentages definitely increased … but several of those factors were outside of anyone control.”

Impact on student learning

Missing a couple of days each month might not sound like much, but it can have an impact on a student’s academic success.

“If you missed two days a month throughout a school year, you’ve basically missed 20ish days,” Sprinkle said. “We have school for 10 months out of the year. That’s really a month of instructional time, 20 school days. We usually have 18, 19 or 20 days in a month that students are in school. So that cumulative effect means that they’ve missed an entire month of in-person instructional time.”

Brown said the full impact varies from student to student, the grade level and the subject matter. When he was a high school math teacher, he followed up with students who missed even one day of school, he said.

“I think as the kids get a little bit older, they realize where their misunderstandings may be and you hope that most of those kids are more attentive about what they missed and intentional about how to make it up,” Brown said. “When you have little kids, they don’t have that experience factor is not existing yet. They really don’t have that capacity to understand what they have to go back and pick up.”

Moving forward

Attendance commanded increased attention by administrators when the district began navigating the unchartered territory of remote learning during the pandemic. Prior to that, Brown said they may have been cavalier about it. As a former building administrator, Brown said he recognizes how easy it is to miss actions that lead to chronic absenteeism.

If a student is out of school for several concurrent days, or is habitually gone two or three days a week, that will grab attention. However, if they are absent a day or two one week then a couple weeks later another day or two, building administrators are less likely to recognize the periodic absences, which turn into chronic absenteeism. 

With two years of increased chronic absenteeism, the district is looking for ways to bring the percentage back down.

“I brought it to building level administrators and said, ‘we need to really try to look at this differently,’” Brown said. 

Communication and raising awareness may be the key to turning the numbers around. He wants parents to understand every day makes a difference in their child’s academic success because lessons build on previous lessons. If a student misses one or two, when they get back to class, they are behind because they missed pertinent information. 

“I love what Coach (Chris) Klieman at K-State says, ‘win the dang day,’” Brown said. “Every day is important. I think, myself included, we don’t approach life that way as much as we should. We want to help families and kids win every day.”