The release of a recent report by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the availability of collated federal data on chronic absenteeism at ReturnToLearnTracker.net have created greater public awareness of the issue of habitual truancy. However, the AEI report tells only part of the story. We dug into the details of the federal data and spoke with school district officials and school administrators across the Lehigh Valley to find out more about chronic absenteeism and how local schools are handling it. Part One of this two-part series discusses federal absenteeism data and its shortcomings. Part Two will cover individual district and school efforts to improve attendance.

By Theresal= O'Brien

Special to the Bethlehem Press

The federal government considers students “chronically absent” when they have missed 10 percent or more of an academic year (18 or more days). The Pa. Dept. of Education regulations, most recently revised in February 2020, require school officials to issue a written notice to parents and guardians after three days (consecutive or nonconsecutive) of unexcused absence. Schools are mandated to schedule parent conferences if unexcused absences persist after the written notice is issued.

The “Return to Learn” tracker and the AEI report focus on data at the state and district levels. However, reasons for absence differ widely from elementary school to middle school to high school. State law in Pennsylvania recognizes this, and permits districts to cite students for truancy beginning at age 15; parents and guardians are on the receiving end of citations for younger children. School principals and support staff use different techniques to improve attendance, based on students’ ages, and community-based social agencies like Valley Youth House and Pinebrook Family Answers which provide different types of assistance based on individual and family needs.

Also noteworthy is that compulsory attendance applies to more children in Pennsylvania than it did before 2020. Gov. Tom Wolf signed H.B. 1615 into law June 28, 2019, changing the required ages of school attendance from 8 through 17 to 6 through 18, effective for the 2020—2021 school year. An 18-year-old Pennsylvanian could drop out in 2019 without affecting a district’s absenteeism statistics; the following year, that was no longer the case.

The impact

of COVID

For the 2021 – 2022 school year – the most recent year for which federally collected absenteeism data is available – Lehigh Valley school districts were still following quarantine regulations developed by the Pa. Dept. of Health for “close contacts” of people diagnosed with COVID. These regulations were tiered based on the number of cases of COVID in each district’s county.

Dept. of Health quarantine regulations issued in October 2021 meant that any child who spent more than 15 (cumulative, not necessarily consecutive) minutes within six feet of a person who subsequently tested positive for COVID had to stay home from school for between 7 and 14 days (depending on test results and absence or presence of symptoms). State regulations were updated Dec. 30, 2023, to shorten the quarantine period to five days for children who did not develop symptoms.

Although individuals who had completed a COVID shot series within six months were exempt from quarantine requirements, children who had already caught COVID were not exempt. (Only children ages 12 and up were eligible to receive COVID shots when the 2021 – 2022 school year began. Shots became available under emergency use authorization for children 12 through 15 on May 10, 2021, and for children 5 through 11 on Oct. 29, 2021. Complete details of Dept. of Health quarantine requirements are available in bulletins 2021 — PAHAN — 607—10-25-UPD, 2021 — PAHAN — 615—12-30-UPD, and 2020 — PAHAN — 533—10-23-ADV.)

For a family with three children, for example, state Dept. of Health regulations meant that each child could miss four weeks (20 days) of school simply quarantining as a close contact of siblings who had separate bouts of COVID, with additional time missed if that child himself later caught COVID or was a close contact of a classmate, e.g., shared a bus seat.

Lynn Fuini-Hetten, Salisbury School District superintendent, underscores the impact of COVID regulations on school absences, pointing out, “During COVID, many students experienced higher levels of excused absences due to exposure and close contact-related quarantines. This was amplified in families where there were multiple children and the potential for multiple exposures.”

COVID itself kept children home from school too, and continues to do so. Although most children who caught COVID over the past four years experienced it as a relatively minor respiratory infection, not every student was fortunate. One superintendent mentioned that two students in her district have missed several weeks of school with COVID illness during the current academic year.

Pa. regs tough

on absenteeism

Even before COVID, Lehigh Valley superintendents and school boards took attendance issues seriously. State Dept. of Education regulation changes in February 2020 elevated the priority of fighting absenteeism. In fact, Pennsylvania regulations are stricter than those at the federal level, considering children “truant” after three days of unexcused absence and “habitually truant” after six days. (These days need not be consecutive.)

According to the Pa. Dept. of Education, “cumulative” days of absence are those for which students do not have a documented “mental, physical, or other urgent” reason. The state considers “illness, family emergency, death of a family member, medical or dental appointments, authorized school activities, and educational travel with prior approval” legitimate reasons for which written excuses should be accepted.

Days of unexcused absence, however, necessitate written notice from districts to parents when they accumulate to three. At this point, school officials may (and generally do) invite parents to a student attendance improvement conference. If a student misses additional days without an excuse after the written notice has been issued, the SAIC becomes mandatory.

This is where the first challenge appears: getting parents or guardians to attend the SAIC. According to the Pa. Dept. of Education, “There is no legal requirement for either the child or person in parental relation to attend a SAIC.” Even if parents choose not to attend, however, the school must hold the SAIC with other parties, including school personnel and other service providers who may be relevant, to discuss the child’s absences, the reasons for these absences, and any supports that will end the pattern of unexcused absence from school.

District officials take SAICs seriously. Fuini-Hetten of Salisbury notes, “It is critical for our students to attend school on a daily basis. Student attendance improvement conferences (SAICs) are designed to support students and their families to increase student attendance and address any underlying issues.”

The output of a SAIC is a student attendance improvement plan (SAIP). Written documentation of the SAIP is required by state law. Although private schools may expel students for truancy – if such penalty is outlined in the school’s code of conduct – public schools may not.

A child who continues to miss school without a documented excuse after a SAIP is in place can be cited for habitual truancy. However, according to the Pa. Dept. of Education, “the General Assembly [has] clearly announced a policy that traditional truancy prosecutions are disfavored and should be used only when other less punitive measures have proved unsuccessful.”

One district administrator says that truancy prosecutions are far from uniform in their effects; for some students, particularly ninth-graders, they can spur a positive behavior change, but for others, they are one more unpleasant consequence of habitual truancy. The mere fact of facing a magistrate district judge is not a cure-all. Northwestern Lehigh School District Supt. Jennifer Holman emphasizes the importance of good relationships with families.

“The family is your partner to get this child to school,” she says, “and you want to build upon your relationship and work with the family, and exhaust all your interventions to get the child to school, because that’s where everybody wants them.”

Next week: Part Two covers individual district and school efforts to improve attendance, as well as community partner truancy prevention programs.

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