News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
White County High School could begin implementing a new social probation schedule to help combat chronic absenteeism.
The school board discussed the proposed schedule at its school board meeting Thursday night. It has not been officially implemented.
Assistant Principal Nathan Aaron said chronic absenteeism rates have gone up lately at the high school. He said the proposed probation schedule will take away certain privileges for a certain number of absences.
“I mean I think that will help us to keep students in school, we’re not taking away their credits or anything,” Aaron said. “But I mean if you’re missing 75 days of school, prom should be the least of your concerns. But that’s my personal opinion.”
The initial draft of the proposed schedule says 20 total absences or 10 unexcused absences will result in no winter formal attendance. 25 total absences or 12 unexcused absences will result in no prom attendance. 30 absences or 15 unexcused will take away participation in graduation. Aaron said there are three seniors that currently fall into that category.
Aaron said this is not to penalize someone that has a legitimate medical concern. He said what they see right now is that students who have 30 plus absences have not turned in any kind of certified health plan.
“We have 12 students with a 504 plan and not all of those are medically related but I’ll count those,” Aaron said. “We have about 12 more that are Type 1 diabetics, have migraines or have a history of seizures. And we have about 8 to 12 that are on an inhaler. So of those about 36 students, five are on our chronic list. Those are not the students we have concerns with (…) What we’re seeing is that a student will go to Fast Pace once a week because they don’t want to come to school.”
Director of Schools Kurt Dronebarger said as presented, the social probation schedule would be handled at the high school’s administrative level. He said while people will be upset about the loss of privileges, they want to show that the school system is serious about students being present in class. Aaron said they are also looking at other potential options to help decrease the chronic absenteeism rates.
“As we look at how our schools are judged, from the state level on different metrics, chronic absenteeism weighs more than our graduation rate,” Dronebarger said. “So even though our graduation is very high, this is still getting us because we have kids that are graduating but missing a third of their year.”
Dronebarger said the social probation schedule is still in the discussion phase. He said they will have another school board meeting before the policy is potentially fully implemented.
