I received the above question by e-mail yesterday. Quite a few teachers in the district have kids on their rolls that they have never met or haven’t seen in weeks or months. If I extrapolate from Ed White last year I would say there are hundreds of kids countywide that nobody has ever met and over a thousand that have come but then disappeared. It used to be that is a kid missed over ten days and you made a good faith effort to contact them you could have your administration drop them. Not anymore.
Now it is a serpentine process that involves rounds of letters home, visits from social workers and if I remember correctly a magic wand.
If I have a kid that misses a string of days in a row I like to call and check. Usually it is an illness or a death in the family that the family had to travel to. The families have other things on their mind than calling the school and letting them know and fair enough. How about this, at 15 days and after three phone calls, we send a letter home and if there is no response then at 25 they are dropped. Unless it is at the start of the school year then if a kid missed the first ten days they should be dropped automatically.
Kids can always reenroll if they reappear but this will stop the district from padding the books and take one more thing off teachers already overflowing plate.
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