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Dr. Kingston Focuses on Increasing CHS Attendance

By Karla Barrientos: It's early in the morning and the sun hasn't risen, but you hear the alarm clock that means its time to wake up and go to school through another cold morning. However, there are some who refuse to go regardless if there is a big test or a midterm that day. As we pass the midpoint of the school year, many people are questioning how consistently the students of Chelsea High are attending school. This issue has gotten more attention since the 2005-2006 school year started with a new attendance policy that caused dramatically lower attendance at CHS and wasn't in the best interest of students.

For many years, the CHS administration, the Boston University Management Team, the Chelsea School Committee, and superintendent were unhappy with the attendance policy in effect through the 2004-05 school year. It had been a struggle getting students with more than two unexcused absences to attend classes they were destined to fail under the policy, so the school committee came up with a new absence policy to start the 2005-06 school year.

Instead of focusing on punishing students for being absent, the policy focused on rewarding students for coming to school. Under the new rule, an absence would be considered an absence without regard to whether it was excused or unexcused. Any absence would make you ineligible for the $25 award per quarter for perfect attendance.

Superintendent Thomas S. Kingston commented on the purpose for making the change, "We wanted the policy to be more reasonable and to have kids not penalized, and to introduce an award of $100 for students who never missed a day of the school year." Although the new policy included a $25 award for students who never missed one day during the quarter, once a student missed a day and became ineligible for the award, there were no negative consequences for further absences. As a result the drastic change soon became a failure after students missed on average 4.5 days each quarter adding up to 18 days the school year.

As the second semester of 2005-06 approached, the groups that set up the failed policy decided to institute a revised version of the old policy mandating that a student who has more than two unexcused absences for a class during the quarter fails that class unless she is able to "buy back" her grade in the following quarter. Yet despite this change, there are still students who don't come to school and the Chelsea School Committee is still not impressed or satisfied with student attendance rates. There are many people who are absent more than three times a quarter and out of 1,500 students, 85 to 90 students a day are absent.

Superintendent Kingston doesn't believe the revised policy has caused attendance to improve significantly. "No, the attendance has not improved this year and it won't until students realize their interest in school," he said. "I would like to focus on working on worst cases, but I would like to expand to help all students." About 90% of the students attend school while 10% are absent, but next year Superintendent Kingston hopes to have a 95% average of people present. "The policy will keep adapting until habits are reinforced and [it] needs to change to encourage better attendance," he said.

So far, the CHS administration, the B.U. Management Team, the school committee, and the superintendent plan to be more active next year in tracking down absent students by calling their home, making frequent home visits, and getting more parents involved. But an attendance policy can only do so much to regulate student attendance. There is more work to be done in helping families understand why their children should come to school and how it will benefit their future. Soon the Chelsea School District hopes all students will come to understand that message.

Article posted to chs.chelseaschools.com: .

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