It is not surprising to see a headline such as this one with the current environment.

It is not my job to cast blame on all of the people whose students have not been attending school for significant amounts of time. Teach long enough and you begin to understand that there’s a lot that you do not understand about the lives that many students have to lead with obstacles that I cannot even fathom. Some of those obstacles deal with physical and mental health. Some hunger and economy.

It makes the argument for wraparound services that much more meaningful. Imagine if the tenets set forth in the LEANDRO court decision were honored by the very governing body that intentionally delays the budget process and miserly hoards on to budget surpluses while giving the wealthy and corporations more tax cuts and expands vouchers to wealthy people.

But there is are a couple of things that school systems can do to maybe help alleviate school absenteeism that occurs because students are playing the system: make attendance mandatory for any exemptions to exams and reinstitute “administrative Fs”.

My classes experienced the highest numbers of absences toward the end of each semester due to the fact that a student could exempt any teacher-made exam (which is 20% of the final grade by state statute) without worrying about how many absences he/she had. That’s because my school system did away with attendance policies for exemption during the pandemic and never reinstated them. Add to that the fact that I could not give a grade lower than a “50” for a quarter grade in a grading system that allows for a “60” to be passing.

Many students simply did the math and started to not come to school if they knew they would at least get a “70” for the overall grade before a final exam was given.

That policy needs to end.

Students being absent for reasons that pertain to health and family emergencies will never be questioned by this teacher as long as the reasons are documented and verified. But when students simply do not come to school because they feel like they do not need to and are satisfied with a minimal grade, that becomes an influence on other students and ultimately creates more work for teachers and staff on the whole.

If students willingly do not come to school for classes with unexcused and documented reasons, then not only should exam exemptions be eliminated for them, they should also face an “administrative F” on their report card. In-class, nongraded work is part of the learning experience. Why should a student pass a class when he/she did not do the work of the class even when all that work may not be numerically counted as a grade?

Attendance matters. All schools should make exam exemptions contingent on an attendance policy as well as grades. The state already has attendance policies in effect to participate in athletics.

And at the same time, all schools systems should be funded enough to provide homebound services and allow for outreach programs to help those who have really pressing reasons for missing school.

And academics are more important.