Some educators are calling on city education officials to allow students to learn remotely — and be marked present — when they are quarantined with COVID, saying current policies contribute to high chronic absentee rates at New York’s public schools.
The education department requires students with COVID to quarantine for five days after testing positive (the day of the test is considered Day 0).
While teachers often send work home for students, those who are quarantined are not offered an official remote learning option and are marked absent.
Although absences due to illness are considered “excused,” they still count toward students’ and schools’ chronic absentee tallies. And schools with high chronic absentee rates — the number of students who miss more than 10% of school days — risk additional state oversight.
According to city officials, 36% of public school students were chronically absent last year. That’s a slight improvement from the 40% of students officials said were chronically absent during the 2021-2022 school year, but remains up sharply compared to about 25% before the pandemic.
Calee Prindle, an assistant principal at a Manhattan high school, noted that missing five school days to quarantine puts students well on their way to being considered chronically absent.
“This specific policy should be reconsidered and amended, if it can be,” said Prindle. “It’s not in the best interest for anyone: not for student learning, not for teacher planning and instruction, not schools, and especially not for [the New York City public school system] who is actively working on recruiting students and families to NYCPS due to decreased enrollment over the last three years.”
Students aren’t penalized for being chronically absent, but absences interrupt learning and contribute to learning loss.
Low attendance rates are also among the factors that contribute to a school’s designation as “low performing” and can prompt them to — eventually — be…
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