Lakeland District policy committee revises attendance policy language; debates verified absences, petitions and credit-withholding

Lakeland District policy committee members and district staff spent a multi-hour session reviewing a draft student attendance policy, focusing on how absence codes in the Skyward student information system should be treated, when absences should count toward petition thresholds, and what sanctions (including withholding credit) should follow repeated violations. No formal vote was taken; committee members asked staff to refine the draft and bring it back to the committee.

Committee members said the discussion matters because attendance affects student learning, teacher workload and state funding tied to average daily attendance. Multiple administrators warned that inconsistent use of Skyward absence reasons has produced heavy administrative work — and sometimes unintended consequences — for school offices and teachers.

The draft before the group collapsed older “excused/unexcused” wording toward a verified/unverified model used in Skyward. Several participants argued for treating “an absence as an absence” for the purpose of triggering interventions, while others pushed to preserve flexibility for prearranged, school-related or documented medical absences. Staff explained that Skyward now stores two condensed absent types (verified and unverified) but an extended list of absent reasons still appears in the system and is used inconsistently across buildings. One administrator said when the district reran reports with standardized reason codes the number of students flagged for petitions fell substantially, from roughly 215 to 11; staff said that…