Fairfax County’s public schools have an unprecedented problem with chronic absenteeism. Students considered chronically absent are those who miss more than 10% of school days in a year.
Chronic absenteeism is problematic because it affects academic performance, creates problems for teachers in their flow of instruction and curricula, and increases the likelihood that students will drop out of high school.
However, the district’s leadership did not appear to be worried about these matters when they closed the schools to in-person instruction for 1 1/2 years during the pandemic. Or, even more personally, when they suspended my three sons for 39 cumulative days for not wearing their masks after Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) signed Executive Order Two, which gave parents the right to choose whether to send their children to school wearing masks.
Now, however, Fairfax County’s Democrat-endorsed leaders are concerned because chronic absenteeism is one metric that affects a school’s accreditation in Virginia, and its COVID-19 waiver expired this year.
Each of Fairfax County’s 199 schools is graded in every accreditation category on a level one to level three rating. A performance rating of level one indicates “at or above standard,” level two is “near standard,” and level three means a school is performing “below standard.” Any school that earns a level three for chronic absenteeism, or any other category for that matter, is put on probation or “accredited with conditions.” The conditions are that the school needs to follow the state’s guidance to improve performance for that indicator, or the school will subsequently lose its accreditation.
Of Fairfax County’s 199 schools, 98 schools received a level two in chronic absenteeism for the 2023-2024 academic year, according to the Virginia Department of Education. Meanwhile, 10 schools (eight elementary schools and two middle schools) received a level three, or “below standard,” in the chronic absenteeism category. If that were to happen again this year without the waiver in effect, those 10 schools would be “accredited with conditions.”
When Fairfax County’s leaders followed teachers unions’ demands and locked our children out of their schools, they proved they are not particularly concerned about students not attending school. But what they are obsessed with is perception. Even when our schools are failing, they want people to believe they are great and proclaim it ad nauseam.
When the Virginia Department of Education announced an opportunity to allow in-person flexible instructional hours to adjust schools’ chronic absenteeism calculations this year, Fairfax County’s school district leaders, particularly Geovanny Ponce and Marie Lemmon, were smart to jump at the chance to alleviate this clear problem. The concern is that they are abusing the program. There is little to no oversight by the regional assistant superintendents to ensure the flexible instruction is administered by a licensed teacher, it does not exceed appropriate pupil-to-teacher ratios, and instruction is tied to Virginia content standards, as Virginia’s Department of Education’s guidelines mandate.
Instead, school administrators quietly whispered stories of what actually happened in several schools. Dozens of children stared at their phones in cafeterias across the county as principals changed attendance sheets to meet the preferences, and likely the demands, of county administrators.
The intended purpose of providing flexible instructional hours is to support our district’s chronically absent students. Done the right way, school and district leaders might be able to prevent colossal learning gaps and worse.
Sadly, Fairfax County’s school board members and district administrators are again failing our most vulnerable children in their attempts to make the district appear to be performing better than it actually is. What will it take to shift the school district’s focus from bureaucrats’ wishes to children’s needs?
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Stephanie Lundquist-Arora is a contributor for the Washington Examiner, a mother in Fairfax County, Virginia, an author, and the Fairfax chapter leader of the Independent Women’s Network.