‘Strive for 95’ not enforced, pointless

As Cheryl Logan began her first year as superintendent for the 2018-2019 school year, ‘Strive for 95’ became the OPS motto, decking Central’s halls with posters detailing the new and improved attendance plan. In the same building, I exist—sometimes.

In the approximated 180 days in a school year, I have missed a cumulative 530 class periods, equal to over fifty days of school based on a nine-period day—though since I only have seven periods in my school day, it would likely equal out to about seventy days. This means that I will have missed upwards of 35 percent of my Senior year of high school.

I, originally, intended to write this story to talk about how I survived the last four years without actually attending a substantial chunk of high school , but later changed the scope of my piece. Throughout the process, I have had mainly positive and constructive conversations with the counselors that have intervened. They are not negligent so much as I am difficult.

Regardless of my personal attendance, the entire Omaha Public Schools district does deal with a substantial amount of truancy, or as many organizations have come to call it: “Chronic Absenteeism”. This is defined as missing 10% or more of a school year, equal to about 18 days. 23.6 percent of OPS students meet this criteria according to the U.S Department of Education.

So, to the district from a chronically absent student, I have a few recommendations to achieve the proposed 95 percent attendance rate.

Predictably, truancy rates rise exponentially once students hit high school. Truancy and unexcused absences are easier to control in earlier years of schooling, as parents have an integral role in making sure that their children attend regularly. As kids become high-school age and are less codependent on their families, the attendance system still focuses on parental control until the student turns eighteen.

As many high school seniors have not yet turned eighteen, the blame for truancy gets pushed aside onto the parents instead of addressed with the students themselves. For students who have parents who either do not care about the issue or are not signed up to receive e-mail and phone notifications of absences, this often means that they can get by with little to no consequences or confrontations.

Instead of this system, face-to-face intervention between a trusted teacher, administrator or counselor and the student would likely be a more effective method. This is difficult considering that the administration has a large number of students to deal with, but if a student’s issues with attendance get to a point in which legal action is an option, it is worth using the time and resources to actually understand the root of an individual student’s issue before contacting a parent or guardian.

‘Trusted’ is the key word in this theory. I have had many conversations with teachers and administrators about attendance, and those that have been constructive have been with people who had previously known me. I have also had one incidence of confrontation that was much more accusatory that, if anything, made me want to come to school even less. Truant students should not be expected to have difficult conversations with people who know nothing about their situation and see them only by the statistics available on their campus portal.

My second solution is an idea that I have been pitching since freshman year, though it applies more to Central’s personal attendance issue than the district’s. Other schools in the Omaha area, including Westside and Millard West, offer conditional open campus. This means that students are allowed to leave the school building as they wish during allotted times throughout the day in which no classes are scheduled, as well as for lunch.

Incentivizing attendance by promising less school at a later date is rather ingenious. During the brief stint in which I participated in the UNO/OPS Middle College Program, if you completed all of your classwork and went to every class that week, you were given a pass out of Friday classes. It gave students something to work towards and to show up for.

Since the middle college housed a hundred students at most and Central boasts well over two thousand, a program like this would likely be too difficult to keep track of—but the concept could help to keep students in the school building during key instruction time.

Of course, an open campus policy would be a privilege earned by having a strong track record of good attendance. This would both encourage students to keep a strong attendance record in early years of high school and eliminate the possibility of truant students exploiting the system.

While I do believe that incentivizing attendance in a positive manner would help to tackle OPS’s current attendance issues, I also believe that the lack of tangible repercussions that attendance has on a student’s grades or ability to graduate is a massive deterrent to going to class.

Under the current OPS grading system, attendance does not factor into grades at all. Given this, there are a few classes in my schedule in which I am able to get away with not showing up for the majority of instruction time, do well on tests, and get by with a moderately high grade.

As my counselor noted to me when I was explaining this, being able to get away with not going to class and passing is a privilege. Knowledge is a privilege. And not going to class because you know the material is not smart or a way to cheat the system, it is just irresponsible. Even though it is irresponsible, however, it works. If the district truly wants to see a change, attendance cannot be viewed as an optional component of high school success.

An attendance program that operates on a ‘one-size fits all’ methodology is bound to fail in a district that houses students with such a broad range of experiences. The road to combating truancy begins with alterations of the grading and attendance systems but must focus more heavily on individualized intervention for each student who falls into the category of chronic absenteeism.