Whether it’s senioritis, skipping an unwanted test or just a “mental health day,” high school students are notorious for cutting class. But now, Maryland delegate Ana Sol Gutierrez is proposing legislation that would deal with truancy at the elementary school level.
Gutierrez intends to introduce the Preventing Chronic Absenteeism Bill for the second time this year. The bill would require that each elementary school in Maryland develop a plan to combat absenteeism in early grades.
“[The plan] celebrates when the class has positive attendance, and then also is ready for some kind of active intervention: either meeting with the parents, or if necessary, social services,” Gutierrez said.
Under the proposed legislation, each school would develop individual intervention strategies, but all would be required to have an official plan in place. Because schools are already federally required to take attendance daily, the legislation requires no additional funding.
“Some principals have wonderful things in place but the school next door may not be doing anything,” Gutierrez said. “This is to add more of a consistent, standardized view.”
Gutierrez proposed the legislation in 2010 after attending a conference of state legislators from across the nation, where information on the effects of early absenteeism was presented. The results of absenteeism prevention strategies in New York and California particularly struck her, she said.
If students develop a pattern of absenteeism by the sixth grade, they’re more likely to drop out of high school, according to a 2007 study that was presented at the conference.
Because the bill failed to pass last year, Gutierrez plans to introduce the bill again in early 2011. Bills rarely pass the first year they’re introduced, she said.
The MCPS Board of Education opposed the bill last year, arguing that the broad attendance procedures it outlines wouldn’t effectively improve the attendance of those who are repeatedly absent.
“The attendance rate in MCPS is extremely high, and focusing efforts on those who need assistance, rather than schoolwide, is a more effective and efficient use resources,” superintendent Jerry Weast wrote last year in a memorandum encouraging the BOE to oppose the bill.
While much of the research on absenteeism analyzed more serious factors, like poverty, Gutierrez’s efforts are also intended to prevent parents from excusing their children from school unnecessarily.
“Many parents, if the child has a cold, won’t send them to school,” she said. “The whole thing is trying to educate them that you have to weigh how sick the child is before they miss school.”
Elementary schools in the Whitman cluster haven’t noticed a serious absenteeism problem. Wood Acres principal Marita Sherburne said that in her six years as principal, she has only had to intervene to address absenteeism twice.
“If over a period of time we do see that there’s a high percentage of absences over a marking period and there’s no unusual circumstance like the family had go away for a couple of weeks, then we basically talk to the individual family and just explain the situation,” she said. “We deal with families one-on-one.”
