MCPS to Release New Attendance Policy

Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) is set to release a comprehensive plan to combat student absenteeism this month. In an article released by MOCO 360, Board of Education President Karla Silvestre explained that “the plan will ‘tighten up’ school policy to ensure consequences are implemented for chronically absent students.” Once released the plan will be soliciting public feedback before being reviewed by Associate Superintendent Damon Monteleone. No further information on what this policy will look like has been given. 

The issue of absenteeism has been highly prevalent within the B-CC student population this year. So far in this school year alone (Aug. 29th-March 30th) B-CC students have had 19,909.5 unexcused absences and tardies. According to the B-CC attendance office, “Most tardies occur during 1st and 5th period.” 

 A B-CC sophomore who wishes to remain anonymous responded by saying, “That doesn’t even include all the students who skip class and turn in fake notes.” Later admitting, “Every time I skip I turn one in because of how easy it is and it then marks me as excused.” 

The distribution of Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE) school report cards revealed that 19.1% of B-CC students are “chronically absent.” Chronic absence is defined as a student who has been absent for more than 10% of the school year. The issue, which has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and related mental health issues, has risen rapidly across the county in recent years. 

“The increase in absenteeism creates more work for teachers. When a student is absent, a teacher has to spend time creating and providing makeup work for the student,” said B-CC Teacher Mrs. Lansell, “increased teacher workload in addition to increased disrespect from students are major reasons why so many teachers are leaving the profession,” she continued. 

With the current policy, MCPS allows schools to implement several interventions, including daily notifications, teacher/student meetings, student well-being team meetings, attending meetings with grade-level administrators/counselors, and truancy board referrals. However, this also leaves room for inaction since it leaves schools to act on a case-by-case basis.

One B-CC junior who has had 189 unexcused absences so far this school year says, ”Honestly there are no real consequences, even if I was just skipping at Starbucks my teachers still let me make up the work and I get away unscathed.” Many B-CC students share similar feelings, “Skipping class has been normalized at this point and it goes pretty much unnoticed, even in the most extreme cases,” said an anonymous B-CC Junior with 271 unexcused absences. 

This issue is consistent across the county with some schools such as Kennedy High School having as high as 49.4% of students being chronically absent. The MCPS Department of Education is dedicated to addressing this issue and hopes that this new plan will be successful in combating the issue of chronic absenteeism within our county.