When Colleen Napleton was a child, her parents wouldn’t allow her to miss school unless she vomited and could prove it. Now that she’s a mom, Napleton has much different rules in her family.
She lets her 8-year-old son miss school when he needs a break, when he’s overwhelmed, when it’s been a rough week emotionally and even when she feels like he needs some special one-on-one time with her.
“I think the change is seeing them as a whole person,” Napleton says of the difference between her parenting style and that of her parents’. “Having respect for them versus outdated ways of them having no autonomy. We consider their thoughts, feelings and struggles instead of just controlling or bossing.”
But while that sounds lovely and nurturing, what about school policies and the concern of falling behind academically? And how do parents who work outside the home determine when it’s significant enough to take the day off with their children — or when to push them to make it through another day at school?
Never mind that some schools and parents continue to reward perfect attendance with certificates, medals, treats and shoutouts.
Attendance policies
First, the facts. Each state determines its own attendance and truancy policies — and those policies vary broadly in the Midwest.
For example, in Illinois, students are allowed five excused absences per school year for illness, additional religious holidays, mental health, a death in the family and emergencies. If a child misses more than 5 percent of the school year in Illinois for unexcused reasons — or nine days — they’re considered to be chronically truant. At that point, the school is required to contact the parent to determine why the child is regularly absent and to figure out how to curb this behavior.
In Illinois, 2023 data collected showed a statewide chronic absenteeism rate of 28.3 percent, down from 29.8 percent the previous year.
Nationwide, in 2021-22, 66 percent of enrolled students attended a school in the U.S. with high or extreme levels of chronic absence, according to the latest U.S. Department of Education data.
It’s only slightly better in 2022-23, early data analysis found by nonprofit initiative Attendance Works, which is on a quest to stop absenteeism that many believe only exacerbates the achievement gap.
Chronic absenteeism typically happens for one of three reasons: A chronic health issue; a lack of transportation/parental involvement to get to school; and school refusal, whether it is the result of bullying, fear of failure, housing and clothing insecurity or lack of motivation.
None of these is an easy issue to tackle simply by creating school policies or by dictating a number of days that students can and can’t miss.
They’re bigger problems.
To go or not to go
For students who wake in the morning and really just don’t feel like going to school that day, the final call is up to the parents, and this is where everything becomes a balancing act, explains Kimberly King, the author of Body Safety for Young Children, a certified K-6 teacher and a mom of three.
Perfect attendance is a lofty goal, but it shouldn’t overshadow the well-being of a child, King explains. She says that regular school attendance is crucial, though deciding when to let your child stay home requires a balanced approach that should examine their physical and their mental health.
Stress, anxiety or emotional struggles may necessitate and break from the school routine, she says.
Fair enough but mental health is so much more difficult to calculate than physical health, which can be monitored via thermometer. And what about the children who may want to stay home daily? The answer is not so clear.
Terra Schultz, an Oak Park mother of three in the education tech sphere, says she determines the severity of her children’s requests by their desire to use electronics. They may have a mental health day if they want it, but they aren’t allowed to use electronics on their day off unless they’re using those screens for schoolwork, she says.
“That sort of takes the fun out of it,” Schultz says.
Other parents allow a mental health day on special occasions when they sense it’s really necessary.
Elsa Yee, a mother of two in the Northwest suburbs, says while her older daughter never wants to miss school, her 13-year-old eighth grader declared she has learned everything she needs to know and would be happy to never return to school. Yee allows her to stay home when it makes sense to do so. For example, they recently traveled for a long weekend, so she let her stay home from school the following day to recover.
“I am also happy to support a true mental health break day, and have offered it occasionally when I’ve observed some periods of high stress,” Yee says.
From the educators’ perspective
While many public schools still push for perfect attendance, as they lose funding when students are chronically absent, research shows that this is an outdated way of thinking.
The largest recent study published on this topic looked at 15,000 students from the sixth to the 12th grade in 14 schools across the West Coast. Researchers found that the students who received attendance awards had worse attendance after getting the awards compared with those who weren’t awarded anything for their attendance. Rather than feeling good about receiving a perfect attendance award, the students were likely to feel like they attended school more often than their peers so they felt entitled to some days off the grind.
An alternative approach: Those who miss school could be comforted by their teachers who are more understanding about catching them up with their work. That way, students who don’t feel like they can return because they missed too much will be more likely to jump back in — and those who are hesitant to take a mental health day — will be more encouraged to take the needed break.
“I do not believe that schools should punish parents for non-attendance,” says Aura De Los Santos, a clinical and educational psychologist. “Rather, there should be effective communication between parents and the school to support each other in situations where children are unable to go to school: Children’s mental health is critical.”
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