Attendance committee presses Infinite Campus expert on codes and approves front-office survey to probe chronic absenteeism

The attendance committee of the Elko County School District on March 11 pressed district staff about how attendance is recorded and approved a survey for front-office staff to diagnose chronic absenteeism.

The committee shifted its agenda to hear from Josh Farmer, introduced by the chair as “the Infinite Campus expert,” who told members some odd attendance tallies likely reflect site-level miscoding rather than system rules. “EMG is hardly ever used,” Farmer said, adding that in many cases a small number of students marked with emergency-closure codes indicated a coding issue at the site level rather than a campus-wide closure. He also explained that EMI, “exempt missed instruction,” is used when a student is on campus but removed from an instructional setting (for example, in the nurse’s office), while suspensions and homebound instruction are coded differently.

Teachers and building staff described operational problems they see daily. A high-school teacher who works at Elko High School said the committee’s third-period snapshot showed “almost 3,000 unexcused absences for 1 period year to date,” and warned extrapolating that figure across multiple periods can dramatically increase the appearance of absenteeism districtwide. School staff urged clearer parental communications and better routines for collecting medical notes so legitimate medical absences are recorded as exempt.

Committee members raised equity concerns about the state’s documentation rules. One member noted that the Nevada statutes and Department of Education guidance require medical documentation for some exemptions and said many rural families lack timely access to clinicians: “I’m not gonna pay for that doctor… If it’s 1 day, great,” the member said, arguing the requirement can unfairly penalize low-income or remote families. The chair said the uniform statewide rule limits local flexibility but agreed outreach and policy channels — including potential legislative fixes — could be appropriate.

On technical features and communications, Farmer said parents can mark a student absent through the Infinite Campus parent portal but that feature is currently turned off for the district; enabling it would not add licensing costs. He also said Infinite Campus offers paid workflow and badging modules that would allow badge-based attendance and automated notifications, but those features require additional purchases and infrastructure. “Enhancements cost nothing to the district, but it’s very unlikely they would pick up on that,” Farmer said; custom development would carry a “pretty hefty cost.”

To collect practical, day-to-day feedback, the committee reviewed a draft survey for school secretaries and registrars that asks about frequency and reasons for absences, how often parents provide detailed reasons or doctor notes, which communication channels staff find most time-consuming or stressful, and suggestions for improving procedures. Survey drafter and committee member said the draft was assembled with input from front-office staff; she disclosed she used AI tools to generate an initial draft and then solicited local edits.

After discussing edits — including asking respondents to rank family-circumstance reasons, separating “stressful” from “time-consuming” channels, and making contact information optional to encourage candid answers — a committee member moved to send the survey to front-office staff with the suggested corrections. The motion carried by voice vote.

The committee also discussed practical outreach steps such as asking pediatricians’ offices to offer to fax or email doctor notes directly to schools, instituting flags in the student information system for chronically absent students, and clarifying guidance for parents about what counts toward the state’s 10% chronic-absence threshold.

The meeting closed after a second public-input period with no speakers and a brief adjournment.