Carbon County school districts talk student attendance enforcement

Carbon County School District No. 2 (CCSD 2) wants to give its attendance policy more teeth.

CCSD 2 and Carbon County School District 1 administrators met with the Carbon County Attorney’s Office Nov. 6 to discuss possibly changing policy regarding student attendance.

The current CCSD 2 policy states administrators will send a letter addressed to a student on the seventh day of that student’s absence. Another letter will be sent on the 15th day, Gates said. On the 20th day, Gates and the principal will review a student’s case and discuss the possibility of litigation.

However, Chief Deputy Carbon County Attorney Dawnessa Snyder said they cannot pursue truancy charges of students older than 15.

Gates said CCSD 2 does not have a problem with attendance, but there are students who consistently miss school.

“Each school probably has a handful of kids that are missing a lot of school,” Gates said.

HEM Junior/Senior High School Principal Dale Kari said their policy may need to be more aggressive to get those students to attend more school.

“We don’t have those teeth right now in our policy,” Kari said.

CCSD 1 Superintendent Fletcher Turcato said in the meeting attendance is important, and should be enforced.

Attendance “is directly related to student achievement, and I want to do everything that I can in our district to increase it,” Turcato said.

Turcato presented ideas he used while working as an administrator for other school districts to keep up attendance. One method was taking away credit from students who had a large number of absences. Turcato said he also took a student’s ability to walk in graduation because of that student’s absences.

“Those are some teeth you can threaten kids with,” Turcato said.

Gates said the policy change may need more “teeth”, to bring students to come to school. However, schools should also offer incentives to students so they want to come to school.

“Something with more teeth will make kids want to come to school,” he said. “But the district also needs to look at ways to make kids want to come to school.”

Gates said any new attendance policy may be “very similar” to CCSD 1’s policy.

“It sends a consistent message to all the kids,” Gates said.

Gates said CCSD 1 and 2 tried to align attendance policies in the past, but things changed. A new policy must be approved by the school board. Gates said he will mention the attendance discussion to the school board in the next regular school board meeting, but will not ask for action. Any policy change will go into effect next school year, Gates said.