Noah Williford

Staff Writer 

Throughout the state, attendance numbers during the pandemic were some of the lowest they’ve been in the North Carolina School Systems’ history. According to ABC11, nearly a third of NC students were considered “chronically absent” during the 2021-2022 school year. “Chronically absent” is a term used to label students who have been absent 10% of the school year or more. During the pandemic, absence numbers were at an all time high and through the return to physical schooling, these numbers have not improved. Chronic absenteeism was acceptable when COVID-19 was rampant and excuses were freely waved, but the WS/FCS Board of Education is moving into the future expecting more. 

   Attendance Policy 5110 was initially written in 2009 and served as the long standing basis for attendance policy in the district. School based attendance rules were within the parameters of this policy, a system that benefited the district until March 13, 2020 where the very idea of attendance was tipped on its head. The attendance policy suddenly became inadequate and the school system had to adjust through asynchronous schooling as the return to school faced an entirely new future. 

   This year, the district took major action on this issue with rewrites to the attendance policy based on the School Attendance and Student Accounting Manual set forth by the state. This allowed it to more accurately reflect and enforce rules for the modern world. The questions on the minds of countless students, however, remained unanswered.

What is up with the student handbook? Why is the school counting excused absences? What is happening with exams? What’s happening with parking?

     For these questions and confusions, superintendent Tricia McManus has an answer. 

   “Our goal is honestly to decrease chronic absenteeism, get students in school,” McManus said.     Emerging from an attendance-laxed world, the district is trying their best to get students in the classroom in a way different from the rules of old. 

   “I am not a person that believes that you should attach punitive measures to motivate people,” McManus said. “That is why my approach generally in life is we gotta get kids to come to school more. If you don’t come to school, you’re going to lose your mental health. If you don’t come to school, you’re going to have to take an exam. Why do we always go to that punitive? I don’t agree with that at all.”

   This punish-less reward-more trend in attendance policy seems to be gaining momentum; first with rewrites to the policy and now with expressed support from staff and administration. However, a great amount of miscommunication comes with this progress. 

   In an entity as large as the WS/FCS system, home to 52,000 students, simple means of communication can often fall short. Misinformation has been a great battle of McManus and her associates as not everyone seems to get the news: sometimes the news isn’t even the truth. 

   “School staff are in the process of analyzing every policy because some of them have not been changed in 30 years,” McManus said. “That’s a long time or more, so someone has to look at them and go, ‘this has got to change,’ or maybe a group of kids or parents calls about it, or teachers say ‘this has got to change’ and so it take goes to a review.”

    The system seems surefire: multiple brackets of judging, rewrites and conversation. With the varying levels of legislation, the district still makes an effort to make sure the public can comment and express as it sees fit.

   “They try to bring a committee together of people that can give and put into that and then drafts of change,” McManus said. “It then goes to the school board. The school board then either approve or don’t approve the policy to go out to public comment. Once that happens, the policy’s posted on the website and people can go and weigh in on it.” 

   This confusion has made the attendance policy a hot topic among teachers, parents and students as seemingly no one is sure exactly what it is anyway. Most information known by students about the attendance policy was outdated, not part of the policy, opinionated, or simply wrong. 

   “It’s trash,” says Junior Henry Halsey, who later cites the suspected rules on teacher made exams: ‘I just know that the tardies are really strict and that you can end up failing a class if you miss too much.”

   “I just know that I cannot get many absences this year at all,” says Junior Bailey Wishart. 

   Some students worry about the schools rules for illness and injury related absences. 

   “My mom’s talking about having me go to school sick,” says Junior Tia Williamson, who took issue with what she had heard about the schools response to absences due to sickness. “I don’t get the absences. That’s risking other people. We don’t know what other people go through if they get sick.”

     Some students such as Sophomore Cassie Maggs simply describe their knowledge of the attendance policy as “nothing.” For these existing confusions and misconceptions Principal Calvin Freeman offers beneficial information on the state of attendance at RJR. 

   With attendance at RJR, 5 unexcused absences in a class qualifies a student to be considered for an administrative failure (marked by the infamous FF50.) The failure is not immediate after 5 unexcused absences, it simply means the teacher has the ability to do so. In teacher-made exams, a student is exempt if they have: An A (90-100) with no more than 5 absences, excused or unexcused; a B (80-89) with no more than three absences, excused or unexcused; or, a C (70-79) with zero absences. Calvin Freeman says, “it becomes ‘how do we hold students accountable for the attendance,’ that accountability of course isn’t grades and administrative failures, we don’t want that, we really want kids to just come to school.”

  With regards to parking, after ten “full day” (two or more entire periods) absences, excused or unexcused, a student’s parking permit is brought into conversation by the head office. The office examines all reasons for absences and takes disciplinary action where it is needed. Calvin Freeman says, “there are reasons that some kids miss, but we have to unpack all of those reasons before we start issuing disciplinary practices that might create some inequities.” These practices are taken less towards the average student absent for academics or sickness and more towards students who are not showing up to class to begin with or students who use their parking spaces as a means to skip.

   In this post pandemic world, the school is stuck in a predicament. The old ways of policy and punishment are inadequate, and temporary solutions are no better. The future is uncertain, but the county is on the case, hunting for a resolution to help everyone. In the mean time, policies will change, the machines of information and misinformation will churn, and we will continue to be absent, excused or unexcused-as we always have and always will.