Chronic Absenteeism

A chronic absentee refers to any student who has missed at least 10% of the school days in one school year, counting from the student’s date of enrollment to the current date.

Students may be chronically absent due to excused absences, unexcused absences, or a combination of both.

Chronic Truancy

A student may be deemed a chronic truant if the student has accumulated unexcused absent days that account for at least 10% of the school days in one school year, counting from the student’s enrollment date to the current date.

Why is this important to students?

Both chronic absenteeism and chronic truancy can lead to any of the following situations for students:

Lowered academic performance.
Placement on the Choices List which keeps students from participating in school activities.
Placement on an attendance contract with the school or the district, as part of the SARB process.

Repairing Chronic Absenteeism or Chronic Truancy

Fortunately, both can easily be repaired and avoided altogether if students start doing the following (in order of importance):

Keep absences to a bare minimum. Most absences should be for illness.
Attend school regularly.
Attend all classes and stay the entire day.
Use Saturday School to clear absences from the attendance record.
- Absences cleared in Saturday School do not count as absences on the student’s attendance records.
- Clearing absences on Saturdays reduces absence totals of individual students.
- Saturday School cleared absences count as days present in school for individual students’ attendance rates.

Please direct your questions about chronic absenteeism to the MVH Attendance Coordinator at (619) 628-5864.