With the majority of absences in 2022-23 being excused and many likely being health related, it is important for schools and districts to create specific guidance on when students should call in sick…
— from a press release sent out by the Colorado Department of Education, October 2023.
An analysis by the Colorado Department of Education, on reported absences in Colorado public schools during the 2022-23 school year, found that nearly 270,000 students missed more than 10% of their school days, last year.
That’s very nearly a third of the state’s public school students missing more than 10% of their lessons.
Doesn’t that seems like a lot of students, missing a lot of school? We note that these students didn’t just miss an occasional day here or there. They missed “more than” 10% of school days. Who knows how much that might be? Could be 50%, for all we know.
If I exhibited that kind of job performance, I would like likely have to find work as a journalist.
I know what you’re thinking: that I already did find work as a journalist. But you catch my drift.
Anyway, a lot of the kids have been calling in sick, which is an “excused” absence, as compared to simply not showing up. Of course, we all got into that convenient habit during COVID. To try and address the problem of too many “excused” absences, the CDE has published a helpful online guide, in both English and Spanish.
¿Cuál es el punto en que uno está demasiado enfermo?
Knowing how sick you are, in Spanish, is more complicated than in English, so the Spanish guide is 6 pages long, compared to the 5-page English version.
In Spanish, you ought to stay home if you have any type of contagious disease (una enfermedad contagiosa) except these diseases:
- Conjuntivitis
- Enfermedad de Fifth
- Enfermedad de manos, pies y boca
- Herpes
- Roséola
- Infecciones por hongos
These are exactly the same contagious diseases that are not dangerous in English, but they are pronounced differently.
“Sick of school” does not appear in either version, so we are left wondering.
According to Colorado Education Commissioner Susana Cordova, the CDE would like to see children attending school, because a lot of them fell behind on expected learning targets during the COVID mess, and probably ended up learning things, at home, that the CDE would prefer they didn’t learn.
But of course, it was CDE who told them to stay home.
Now that COVID is just another contagious disease, CDE suddenly wants everyone to go back to how it used to be. But that’s not happening.
Archuleta School District had a slightly higher “Chronically Absent” rate than Colorado’s — about 40% of our District’s kids were “Chronically Absent” last year, compared to a 31% rate for the state as a whole.
Which is better than Ouray School District, where 67% of kids were “Chronically Absent”. I doubt that was all due to sickness, but if it was, at least the kids were weren’t spreading enfermedades contagiosas.
But who knows what they were learning?
Apparently, they were learning that it’s okay to skip school.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.