Attendance Team Holds Weekly Chronic Attendance And Tardiness Meetings

By: Jailynn Lopez

Regularly attending classes is a significant aspect of becoming a well-rounded student and can significantly impact student performance during a high school career.

Many students do not realize this and have started to accumulate tardy’s or, have been unable to consistently attend classes for a full-day. One of the issues is that attendance for students is renewed every year, but in the past, attendance followed students during all four years. “Attendance and tardiness are a concern, [but] things have changed since the pandemic and in order to get us on track to where we need to be we need to start making better connections with parents and finding out why our students are not attending school or showing up late to school and once we get to the bottom of that I think we will see an increase in our attendance [and]/or tardiness” said Mr. Davis Friedman, Assistant Principal.

Mrs. Kimberly Matthews, the Dean of Students, has been holding meetings with students and their families to discuss the recurrence of their absences and tardiness. Attendance success plan meetings are held weekly for students who have chronic attendance. These policies that are being enforced have always been in place and can be found in the student handbook.

Due to lunches being 30 minutes long, homeroom has been shortened and posted QR codes utilized for tardiness make it easier for students to report their attendance. The new QR codes also make it easier for the attendance officers to know exactly when students arrive to school and why students are late.

"With the QR codes in place for tardiness, students have more time in their seats and less time waiting for paper passes to be written. Also, administration can now see why students are absent by looking at the responses on the Google Form" Matthews said.

Students can earn shop-related job opportunities and have the ability to work during school hours with the Work-Based Learning (WBL) program that all CTECS schools offer. The WBL Program allows students to earn money during the school day, while still earning credit for their trade area.

School work and attendance play a major role in student eligibility for WBL. "Students should make their grades and attendance a priority not just as good practice, but to also be eligible to go out on job shadowing and work-based learning" Matthews added.

"Attendance and tardiness are not just the responsibility of the Attendance Team, but everyone should be involved: teachers, parents, administrators, etc. I always say ‘it takes a village,’ or in this case the Kaynor Community. We can make this better as a team effort” said Mrs. Nancy Maisonet with the Attendance Team.

“It is important to recognize the students that do attend school on a regular basis and it is important to make sure that they know how much we appreciate their attendance here” Mr. Friedman added.