School board to address chronic absences and truancy issues

On average, students in Marion County Public Schools (MCPS) are chronically absent over 7% more than the rest of the state as of 2021.

To combat absenteeism and truancy, the district has studied the most effective strategies to proactively monitor, assess and support students to avoid preventable absences from school before they happen.

Exasperated by the pandemic, MCPS saw a nearly 40% rate of chronic absences in comparison to Florida’s 25% in the 2020-21 school year, according to Jonathan McGowan, director of mental health and wellness.

“During that year, that was obviously the height of COVID,” McGowan said. “With the rules that we had to follow for exclusion of students when they were sick, or if they were a direct exposure to COVID, they were out 10 or 14 days.”

McGowan said attendance numbers improved in the following school year and the current school year. He and his team will be reviewing those improvements with the school board at a work session on Thursday. They also will review multiple strategies and incentive plans that will be used to lower the rate of chronically absent students and raise overall attendance in the next school year.

The district’s strategies include proactive measures such as giving phone calls home and sending messages from schools to encourage attendance, in addition to conducting progress monitoring and problem solving meetings to keep track of and remedy issues of attendance in schools, according to the presentation that will be given Thursday.

McGowan also said that students’ mental health can have a huge impact on their ability to attend school regularly, and that the district will continue to conduct behavioral and emotional screenings and interventions to identify students who might need aid.

“What we call it is the behavioral emotional screening system that we use as part of our mental health plan to identify any needs up front so that we can be proactive,” he said.

Each school also has a multidisciplinary team that identifies and works with students who exhibit mental health or behavioral concerns and figures out what the best form of intervention would be on a case-by-case basis.

“If a student has mental health concerns such as anxiety or depression, that could certainly keep them from wanting to attend school,” said McGowan.

The school board work session where updated attendance data, strategies and incentives will be presented will take place at 9 a.m. on Thursday.