Here at home and across the country chronic absenteeism has been a difficult problem in need of quick solutions to minimize its damaging effects. Here at Eleanor Roosevelt Highschool in particular, there have been solutions introduced to try and solve this issue because of the consequences it can have. One of the most recent policies that have been introduced was the policy to keep students in the cafeteria once they arrived as late as 9 for first period until the period was over. This was a policy introduced in the 2023-2024 school year, and will be put in place again this year.
Chronic absenteeism, as defined by the American Federation of Teachers, is when a student misses 10% or more of their days in school for any reason. That could be excused absences or unexcused absences. Truancy as defined by the Merriam Webster dictionary is when a student is absent for more than 8 days in a quarter, though this definition is exclusively for unexcused absences.
According to the website healthychildren.org, over a quarter of students in the US missed a month or more of school. As stated on the site being chronically absent like this can have disastrous effects such as lower test scores and grades which can eventually lead to students dropping out. Roosevelt’s policy aimed to combat these statistics for both truancy and chronic absenteeism.
“When you look at graduation rate that’s tied to attendance, if you’re not in school, you can not be educated. If you’re not in school, you cannot pass your classes. And our goal is to help students have their classes to get an active diploma,” said Ms. Jamall, the 12th grade assistant principal in Roosevelt in an interview on the subject.
“Once we came into this administration, when we came to Roosevelt, that was school year 2022-2023, we noticed a trend of students who were chronically absent, which was based on first period attendance,” she said. “We had to address it.” This introduced the policy to hold late students for first period, and it seems that it has been helpful in addressing this issue, according to Ms. Jamall who said the absence rate had dropped down a significant amount after the new policy.
“We were 9% lower than other high schools,” said Ms. Jamall based on 2nd quarter attendance. This is of course good news that will hopefully keep students from being absent so long as this policy continues to be put in place.
The only question now is what impact it has had on students that are still late, and whether or not this is the best solution to the problem. Ms. Jamall has stated that any ideas to improve the policy are welcome, so if you have any ideas don’t keep them to yourself!