Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Staff Attendance Data topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Committee reviews DESE staff-attendance report, members caution on maternity-leave distortions
Summary
Committee members reviewed a new DESE staff‑attendance report (2024–25 data) and cautioned that maternity and extended leaves and the predominance of female staff can skew absence figures; district staff said extended leave categories are tracked and the state may revise initial reports.
The Auburn School Committee discussed a newly released DESE staff‑attendance report covering the 2024–25 school year and raised concerns about how the state’s metric counts absences.
Dr. Chamberlain (Speaker 5) introduced the report and said it will be part of each district’s profile on the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) website; he explained that an absence for the report is defined as missing more than a half day of work for reasons outside of paid vacation or district‑approved professional development and that administrators’ numbers are aggregated for confidentiality.
Several committee members questioned whether extended leaves such as maternity leave or FMLA are included and said those leaves could skew comparisons between districts. Committee members noted that because a majority of teachers are female, maternity‑leave years could raise a district’s absence count and complicate comparisons. One committee member said, “I'd be interested to see if they took out maternity leaves, how different our numbers would be.”
District staff (Speaker 7) responded that the district office does track attendance and that extended leaves are included in the dataset used for this report, which can affect the snapshot. Members also observed that DESE has revised initial runs of other reports and suggested the state might refine the data in future releases.
Committee members characterized the DESE report as a useful snapshot but urged caution in interpretation and emphasized the need to consider context such as long‑term leaves when using the metric for comparisons or negotiations.
