Enforcing Truancy Difficult As Some Push For Partial In-Person Learning For Students

From The Center Square:

By Greg Bishop

With truancy enforcement difficult in the era of COVID-19 and remote learning, some say reopening in-person education for those most disconnected Illinois students is vital.

Because of COVID-19 concerns, as of Monday, of 1.9 million students, nearly 1.2 million are remote only. Fewer than 600,000 are hybrid and around 170,000 are in-person. That’s according to data from the Illinois State Board of Education.

Anecdotal reports are that around a quarter of students in remote-learning districts aren’t logging in to remote classes. Specific schools may have higher or lower turnout. Such statewide data for the current semester isn’t yet available.

Jeff Vose, the Regional Office of Education 51 Regional Superintendent, said his staff members are working on truancy issues where they can.

“It’s tough to chase some of these students down because you can’t do the home visits,” Vose told WMAY. “They’ll come to the porch, but our truancy caseworkers aren’t going to go into the houses so they have to do those communications at the front door.”

He said truancy enforcement is difficult.

“As the court services have suspended some of their caseloads at this time due to the pandemic, we are just trying to work in unison with the districts, and the parents, and the students,” Vose said.

In Springfield, school board member Tiffany Mathis said some students marked absent may not have clicked through to the correct form or checked the right box.

“We feel that’s contributing to the high truancy numbers,” Mathis said. “We think those numbers may not be as accurate as they appear because we know that there are issues with how attendance is being taken across the district and it’s not consistent for any one kid.”

One way to solve the truancy issue is to open schools back up to in-person instruction, even if just partially, she said.

“Let’s take another look at the students that have been most disconnected, if nothing else, get those students taken care of and addressed and then do kind of a phased roll-in to get everybody back into school that wants to be there, teachers as well,” Mathis said.

Mathis has for months urged for in-person instruction, but the board there has decided to continue remote learning into January. She said there needs to be some movement to in-person instruction for those in most need.

“To not acknowledge that we have to do something about that really is to the academic detriment to the youth in our community, and that’s very concerning to me,” Mathis said.

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