by Geoff Fox

Morgan County Schools saw a 19.84% chronic absence through the third nine weeks of the school year with four schools seeing percentages over 20%.

That districtwide percentage is down compared to previous three years, with the 2022-2023 school year having had the highest chronic absenteeism for the third nine-weeks at 30.41%.

School officials use the 2022-23 school year as the start of the data is because it is minus any COVID restrictions, Assistant Superintendent Jeromy Duley said.

“So that’s where our baseline data really took place,” he said.

In 2023-2024, chronic absence percentage dropped to 22.80% with a spike in 2024-2024 to 26%.

“This year we’ve been doing better than ever,” Duley said. “So we’re really pleased with this.”

Duley attributed the percentage of students going to schools as leaders having done a lot of frontloaded work in trying to make sure when there are illness, absences don’t get the yearly attendance rates off track.

Duley said schools are “knocking it out of the park” with truancy, as there have not been as many letters being sent out as in the past.

Only 244 “five-day letters” have been sent out among the schools in Morgan County and only 23 MDT meetings have taken place. So far, there haven’t been any home visits. Families receive a letter when their student has five unexcused absences to draw their attention to attendance policy.

MDT meetings are held when a student has 10 or more unexcused absences. School officials work with the parents first.

They are allotted 10 parent notes every year, but if they have parent notes left over, Duley said they’ll work with parents to get those notes in if the student has been out with an illness.

“The last thing we want to do is drag them to the prosecutor’s office for no reason when they still have those notes there,” he said.

He did add that if a student hits a 10-day absence threshold, no matter if it’s excused or unexcused, there’s a staff meeting held for that student so the parents and kids know where they stand.

At the six schools in Morgan County, 313 students have perfect attendance, 601 have outstanding attendance (two absences or fewer), and 539 have faithful attendance (2.5-4.5 absences).

Duley said the numbers for those attendance awards are high with the amount of illness that the system has had.

He also told board members there are 405 homeschool students, which is up two since the last nine weeks and 122 Hope Scholarship enrollment, which is up three since last nine weeks.

The home school enrollment changed due to integration with WVEIS flagging students who have moved or returned to public school, he said.