Falmouth School Committee First-Hand Look At COVID Absenteeism
A Falmouth High School student went before the school committee to describe first-hand the difficulties students and teachers are facing in the classroom amidst high COVID numbers and increased absences.
Anna Bennett, a representative for the class of 2024, delivered the Student Advisory Report before the committee at its Tuesday meeting.
“It doesn’t take me being here to know that COVID cases are way up and so many students are absent,” she said. “One of my classes, we normally have 15 kids in it, we had three last Tuesday. And that’s the story for so many kids: classes with as little as three or six kids in it that would normally have 15 to 20. There’s just so many people out with positive COVID cases, or quarantining, or their family has COVID or they’re just not feeling well for some non-COVID related reason.”
Superintendent Lori S. Duerr said Falmouth schools had an average absentee rate of 18.5 percent among students during the first week back at school following the holiday break. She said this number is “quite a bit higher” than what they would normally see that week for absences.
Falmouth schools returned fully to in-person learning at the start of the 2021 school year but the loss of a remote option among climbing rates of absenteeism has heightened the pressure felt by students when it comes to making up missed work.
“It’s resounding throughout the school that when you’re at home, there’s only so much you can do,” Anna said. “If you test positive, you’re staying at home and you’re not getting any of your work… you’re out of school for at least five days and then you have to come back and catch up on all that work.”
Anna said that with both midterms and the end of the academic term fast approaching, the stress is a lot for students to bear.
There are support systems in place for students who miss school, including a policy on making up work that allows students to take as many days as they were absent to finish their makeup work. Sonia L. Tellier, assistant superintendent and director of teaching and learning, said that many teachers have further extended this policy to accommodate the volume of absences being seen in schools.
“Everybody is doing the absolute best that they can,” Anna said. “It’s just a lot, and it’s a lot of stress for students to have to worry about making that up even with the supports in place. It’s stressful and it’s difficult.”
In regard to staffing, Dr. Duerr said that attendance numbers were good for the first week back in the classroom. N95 masks were distributed to all Falmouth school staff and testing kits were given to teachers who were interested.
Anna commended teachers for all that they’ve been doing, but also said that teacher absences have proved to be an obstacle for students as well.
“A lot of teachers have been out either sick, or they have a sick child at home, or they’ve been exposed,” Anna said. “It’s also difficult for the teachers to effectively put together a lesson when they’re not in school and can’t be there, and it’s hard for students to make up that missed work when the teachers aren’t there as well.”
She said that teachers are usually quite responsive to student emails, but the amount of work that must be done upon returning to the classroom is very dependent on the course itself.
“It depends on the class mostly, because there’s some [classes where] you can almost keep up online and there’s some that you really can’t do anything until you get back in the classroom,” she said. “Those days that you are absent, teachers are so great with responding to their emails, especially when there’s so many students missing. Some teachers will just send out a big email to all of the students who are out on a specific day and say this is what you missed, this is what you can do to make it up at home, and this is what you’ll have to do when you return.”
Board members were impressed with Anna’s candidness about the situation and appreciated hearing a first-hand account of what the classroom is like right now.
“It’s one thing to have the data and know about the data and it’s another thing to have a student in the classroom say last week there were 15 kids, today there were three,” said board secretary Melissa Keefe. “I know that we see it on paper and I know that we see it in emails, but there’s nothing quite like hearing reports from the boots on the ground.”