Have you ever thought about perfect attendance? I recall one of my good friends having perfect attendance all through school. I knew he came to school when he was not feeling the best, and scheduled all his appointments after school. What that said about him never really hit home until I was discussing perfect attendance with Polly Allen, Sidney Middle School secretary. She explained how it was not just coming to school when one is not feeling the best and getting one’s braces fixed after school, but how it was a behavior or an attitude that shows one’s work ethic and dedication to a goal. She said these are the kids that are going to be successful in life. I thought about this and it occurred to me – these students and their families view education as a priority.

As assistant principal at Sidney Middle School, one of my duties is to address attendance, specifically truancy and tardiness. Truancy, by definition, is a student missing school without permission. According to the Ohio Revised Code (ORC), there are two levels of truancy: chronic and habitual. A student with 5 consecutive unexcused absences, seven unexcused absences in one month, or 12 unexcused absences in a year is considered chronically truant. A student with seven consecutive unexcused absences, 10 unexcused absences in one month, or 15 unexcused absences in one year is considered to be habitually truant. The key word with both of these types of truancy is unexcused absences, which occur when a child misses school and is neither called in by his or her parents as being absent nor excused with a note upon his or her return to school.

Nationally, an average of 42 percent of students miss more than ten days of school a year, according to a recent Dayton Daily News article on the subject. Last year at Sidney Middle School, 35 percent of our students missed ten or more days of school, with 44 of those students missing 20 or more days. While this is a combination of excused and unexcused absences, one has to remember there are only 178 days in a school year. Students who miss this much school are missing out on weeks, or in some cases, months of class time and instruction.

Online education choices have added to the headache of truancy, as It can take weeks for a student to enroll and get set up to work with many of the online homeschool programs. A problem we see is that during this transition period, parents stop sending their students to school. Our policy and online school policies are the same – the student must attend school until they actually start working online at home.

The truancy problem is even worse when students are returning to local public schools from an online school. Often it takes a month of a student not doing any work online before the online school even starts the truancy process. I am still tracking down students that were removed from online academies last spring for truancy reasons. How can a student recover from this much loss in instruction? Parents considering online homeschool education, please think about all of this before making that jump. For some students this really can work, but I see more students fail than succeed.

Tardiness is the other problem we deal with. Students are tardy to school when they are late for their first period class without a valid excuse. While this may seem to be a minor issue compared to truancy, there are several problems that go along with a student’s tardiness: missing out on instruction time, disruption of the class, and creating a bad habit that is not tolerated by businesses when it comes time for these students to enter the workforce. Last year SMS had roughly 14 percent of our students arrive tardy to school ten or more times, with 43 of those students arriving tardy to school 20 or more times. To bring this into perspective, a student being 15 minutes tardy to school, for example, an average of 40 times is equivalent to missing 10 hours of school or missing an entire class 12 times.

Imagine what happens in the classroom when a student is late. A student enters a classroom tardy. He comes in during the middle of the class, stopping the teacher’s lesson. He has to get out his materials and get settled in his seat. Now think about having this happen 20 times a year by two different students. Not only are these students missing out on valuable instructional time themselves, they’ve now become a disruption to the classmate’s valuable instructional time. Students who are habitually absent pose a problem to the rest of the class as well. Teachers are programmed to help students. If just two or three students are truancy problems, how much class time is being spent trying to catch them up to the rest of the class? When one looks at it from this perspective the whole class loses out.

There are numerous studies that speak to the negative effects of students missing school. Students who miss a lot of school in the early years never catch up to their peers with regard to reading level. Student who miss too much school in later grades are at a much higher risk of dropping out. While the list of negative effects is vast, pretty simply, missing school is not good for the student.

For many students, tardiness and truancy have become a habit, and as we all know habits are hard to break. Companies do not tolerate being late to work or having poor attendance. Many local companies here in Shelby County have expressed to Sidney City Schools that they don’t have a problem finding employees they are able to train; they have a problem finding employees with good attendance records and work ethic. Employers are looking for people that have the “soft skills” to be successful in the workforce. Some examples of soft skills are the ability to work with others, the ability to problem solve, strong work ethic, and having good attendance. One of major the concern is people taking off work too often or falsely calling in sick. This habit is already starting with students in middle school. These students are going to be surprised when they try to continue this behavior at their first job.

Every day we send out School Messenger calls to parents who have not called in their student’s absence. Every day we have several students who we hope are home with parent knowledge, but we are unsure because no one calls them in. These are the cases where students and parents end up in court. Every year there are seven to 10 students and their parents who I have to file truancy on. Judge Zimmerman and the Shelby County Juvenile Court are always supportive of the schools. Unfortunately, the way the law is written, by the time they have missed enough school to be truant, it is academically too late–they are so far behind they can’t possibly catch up. Often, we request that these students attend summer school, but this is no solution to the problem. We need to get them to be present in school before truancy is an issue.

Addressing this issue takes a village. Members of the community can help schools and police by reporting children they see who are not in school when they should be. Parents can help make education a priority. Encourage your child to be at school and on time as much as possible. Remember, we cannot educate them to their fullest potential if they are not present. Parents can keep the lines of communication open–if your child is unable to attend school for a valid, excusable reason, please communicate with the school. Communication between home and school is the key to showing your children that their education is important. Should your child be out for an extended illness, let the secretary know when they will return. If you are unable to call them in as absent, please be sure to send a note with them when they return, and always bring a doctor’s note when possible.

I need help making school a priority in our community. Our attendance at Sidney City Schools is not the worst in the state, but I think we should set our standards and expectations higher.