RICHLAND COUNTY, S.C. — As the school year begins, Richland School District Two says it’s cracking down on repeated absences in all of its schools.
Parents like single mom Alexis Griffin are concerned about how it’ll affect them.
“I'm in between both,” Griffin said. “I'm happy about it, but also a little apprehensive only because I'm a single mom. And I know that any seat time that my son is missing, or has missed, it's been for a good reason.”
The school district’s attendance policy remains the same:
Students can’t miss more than 10 days.
Documents must be provided to avoid an unexcused absence.
In high schools, students must complete 120 hours of “seat time” for each class to receive a credit.
This year, the district says it’s prioritizing cutting down on ‘chronic absenteeism’, a phrase used when students miss more than 10% of school days. It’s a different concept than truancy, which is related to the number of unexcused absences exclusively.
“When you're missing multiple days a month that can really have a major impact, and it impacts them academically, it impacts them socially,” said Abby Cobb, the lead social worker in the district. “Schools are such an important foundation.”
Cobb says the pandemic brought on an increase in chronic absenteeism.
“There's been a perspective shift that you don't have to come to school every day to be successful,” Cobb said. “And that's just- that's not true. Even our brightest kids, even our kids who are in the most advanced, you know, classes, they need all aspects of coming to school, all aspects of their education.”
Now, the district has introduced new employees focusing only on that, through covid relief funding.
“It's helping to bring more education, more awareness to our staff, making sure that we have a culture within our schools that really focuses on attendance,” Cobb said. “Helping our schools to increase those tier one universal interventions and helping to then also come up with other ideas and suggestions of how we need to intensify those interventions, what that looks like.”
They’ll analyze the district’s attendance data to find strategies for keeping kids in classrooms.
“We will and we always will have to address individual students, individual families and their unique circumstances,” Cobb said. “But while doing that we have to take a systematic approach.”
Alexis Griffin and other parents say they hope the district continues to keep individuals in mind despite the systematic change.
“I just hope and pray that when they're cracking down on attendance that they look into the situation of the student first, not just of the missed days,” Griffin said. “I hope that they, you know, dig a little deeper and you know, speak with parents.”
Richland School District Two says they encourage parents to contact them with concerns.