Marshalltown board reviews attendance data, state law implications after ‘day without immigrants’

Marshalltown Community School District officials on Feb. 10 presented detailed attendance data, described how state reporting differs from the district’s internal counts, and outlined steps the district is taking to address chronic absenteeism after a large absence event tied to a community action.

District attendance lead Dr. Elizabeth Harris Medina told the board that the district treats unexcused absences as its priority for intervention and that state reporting counts all absences (excused and unexcused). She said the district had 5,325 active students at the end of the fall semester and reported 598 students with unexcused absences (about 11 percent) while the state’s chronic-absence figure (which includes excused absences) was roughly 24.6 percent for that reporting window.

Those differences matter for how and when the district intervenes, Harris Medina said: “We really want to focus on those unexcused absences because that’s where we see the…