Parents in Indian Prairie School District 204 will no longer be able to select “vacation” as a reason for their child’s absence, due to a set of attendance-related changes the district is implementing this year.
The district is standardizing its coding for absence recording, adding new automated messages alerting parents when their child has missed five or nine days of school, and increasing the focus on the importance of being present.
“It’s built on a simple but powerful premise that we cannot teach students that are not in the classroom,” Deputy Superintendent Louis Lee said at Tuesday’s school board meeting. “Ensuring consistent student attendance is a shared responsibility.”
Vacation code removed to focus on instructional time
Reasons parents can choose when excusing a student’s absence include illness, family-related causes, professional care appointments, mental health days and religious observances. A college visit category is one additional reason for which high school students can be excused.
Newly missing from the list is vacation.
“We are taking a very firm stance on vacation. That is not available on our parent view because we are really wanting our students present and available for learning,” said Sara Mumm, director of research and assessment. “We did decide to take the vacation code and remove it from one of our parent options this year.”
Several school board members said they think it’s a good idea to no longer implicitly sanction family trips on school days.
“Looking at getting rid of the vacation label, I see that as a good thing,” school board member Andrew Bernard said. “You should not miss instructional time.”
Proactively pushing for positive attendance
District 204’s daily attendance rate already exceeds the state level — at 94.4% locally compared to 91.8% statewide — so strong attendance already is a point to celebrate, Lee said.
But inconsistencies have existed in how different buildings and school levels classify absences, and the district wants to be more proactive to ensure students are in class.
Following a change by the Illinois State Board of Education, the district now refers to its attendance data as a “daily attendance rate” rather than a rate of “chronic absenteeism.” The district also aims to notify parents earlier when absences are starting to add up.
When a student has missed more than nine days in a given school year, each additional absence will require documentation, such as a doctor’s note, in order to count as excused.
“We wanted to make sure our language really pushed on that proactiveness of being present,” Mumm said “and reinforced the positive benefits of that.”
Seeking ‘root cause’ of increasing absences
Notifications sent when a student has missed nine days in a given school year will include a link to complete a new “root cause survey” to help the district understand if any supports can help achieve more consistent attendance.
“Rather than making assumptions about why a student has missed school, this tool helps our school teams identify underlying household barriers, such as chronic transportation issues, childcare gaps or student mental health concerns,” Janine Wange, positive engagement and student support coach.
School board member Mark Rising encouraged administrators to use personal outreach as well when seeking to understand the reasons for repeated absences — and officials said they will.
“You have much better luck when a trusted voice from the school reaches out and asks ‘what is the problem?’” Rising said.
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