District U-46 truant policy results cloudy

A revamped attendance policy at Elgin Area School District U-46 high schools aims to give tardy and truant students a chance to wise up.

A full semester in, it's still too early to tell if the policy is working as planned, said the district's executive director for secondary education, Tom Donausky.

"I'm not naive enough to think there wouldn't be some inconsistencies at this point, but it's not intentional," Donausky said. "It's too early to expect it to be uniformly enforced across the district."

The previous policy featured a four-step program that eventually removed students from class after accumulating four truancies or 12 tardy marks.

"We wanted students to be better prepared for the Prairie State Achievement Exams and started looking at other options than dropping kids from their classes," Donausky said.

A district committee last year looked at policies enforced at other area schools.

"We were having trouble coming up with a viable alternative ... until we looked at Evanston," Donausky said.

Evanston Township High School's policy features four steps that lead into a no-credit provision.

Instead of dropping a student from a class, he or she may remain in the class with a no-credit designation.

After improved attendance is demonstrated by a student, the credit may be reinstated by a review committee.

In stating the policy through school visits and videos, "we tried to communicate as best we could," Donausky said. "But we're not sure if students are taking things seriously yet."

Evanston instated their four-step, no-credit policy in 1996.

Today, the school's attendance is up from around 90 percent to 95.8 percent last year, said Assistant Principal Marilyn Madden.

According to district data, average daily attendance at U-46's high schools in 2006-07 was 91.3 percent. Bartlett High School featured the highest average daily attendance of 94.2 percent. Larkin High School came in the lowest at 87.1 percent. The state's average attendance for that year was 93.7 percent.

"Our staff didn't like the policy at first," Madden said. "They wanted it to be tougher ... to roll a truant student's grade into an F instead of giving them the no-credit option."

The no-credit policy "does create more work for us," she said. "But the numbers (show) it's effective."

In its 11-year span at Evanston High, Madden has found the no-credit policy works to motivate some students, but not all.

"There are always some who don't comply because of family issues, (gang) activities or work," she said. "When we find out that they have to work, we can adjust their schedules. But these kids really need to come in and advocate for themselves."