The 2020 school closures kept students at home for months, and even though school has opened back up, many of the students still haven’t come out of the mindset and habits of lockdown.
One of the significant issues facing the nation — and Chapman — is absenteeism.
According to Bianca Vázquez Toness of the Associated Press, “Absent students miss out not only on instruction but also on all the other things schools provide — meals, counseling, socialization. In the end, students who are chronically absent — missing 18 or more days a year, in most places — are at higher risk of not learning to read and eventually dropping out.
Attendance clerk Adrienne Miller said that this absenteeism is also a legal problem.
“We have accidentally taught students and parents that absentees are not that big of a deal because they can do so much virtually,” she said. “However, the law requires a student to be in a chair and not just have the work done.”
Online learning was a large part of the initial school closure, and it continued during the quarantines of 2020, 2021 and 2022. This allowed students to keep up with work while still at home for prolonged periods of time.
But the quarantine policies have changed even if the students and their families haven’t.
“This situation has created a comfortable environment where students and parents feel more comfortable missing school because they believe they can do their work online,” Principal Matt Davis said.
Last year, Chapman became stricter regarding attendance, tracking students more closely and holding them more accountable for missing.
“Everybody needs accountability, and last year was the first real year that we stood by that,” Davis said.
Miller said this year, the school is increasing its attention to absences.
“We are very actively assigning detention and ISS for tardies and absences,” she said. “Absenteeism can cause you to fail a class. It doesn’t matter if you have an A. If you miss too many days, you will fail.”
Not only have the students grown accustomed to the pandemic-era schooling but the parents have, too.
Although assignments are posted regularly by teachers to online platforms, the days of online learning as a direct substitute for classroom time are over.
“I get parents calling me all the time talking about how their kid is sick, asking if they can just do online schooling for the day, but what they don’t realize is that we don’t have online schooling anymore,” said Miller.
Davis said that the process of getting students back in school is an important one but not one that can happen quickly.
“I believe that seeing students and putting my eyes on them is very important, and as we’ve transitioned back I think we all knew this wasn’t something that would be fixed overnight, but I do believe we have all done better and it will only get better from here,” he said.
