What was the attendance during school 'vacation' week?
I have to admit I was surprised one day last week when I looked out the window and saw a yellow school bus in our neighborhood. Wasn’t this school vacation week?, I thought.
Then I remembered. The teachers’ strike. Or maybe we should call it The Teachers’ Strike, considering the impact it had, and continues to have, on the city.
The strike resulted in students’ missing 12 days of school, four of which had to be made up last week during what was supposed to be February school vacation week (Monday was a holiday). So how many students actually showed up?
Attendance figures provided to The Beverly Beat by Superintendent Suzanne Charochak show that an average of 61% of students attended school during ‘vacation’ week.
Of course, another way of saying it is that 39% of students were absent.
Absences were highest at the high school, where a whopping 60% of students didn’t show up. Here’s the school-by-school breakdown of the percentage of students who did attend:
McKeown*— 88.15%
North Beverly — 81.52%
Centerville — 77.95%
Ayers — 76.91%
Cove — 74.75%
Hannah — 74.36%
Middle school — 57.29%
High school — 40.46%
*McKeown School is pre-K and kindergarten
For comparison, Beverly schools had an attendance rate of about 93% over the last three years, according figures on the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education website.
When asked what she thought of the attendance overall, Charochak texted me, “North Beverly School had great attendance!!” I followed up by asking if she was disappointed with the numbers, especially at the high school.
“No,” she said. “It was anticipated as high school students have many other commitments including work. We did have several students on school-based trips and other activities.”
Luckily there’s no minimum attendance required for a school day to count toward the required 180 days. If schools open, it counts, no matter how many students show up.
Average teacher attendance, by the way, was 90% during the week, according to Charochak.
Students still have five more strike makeup days to go — three on Saturdays and two tacked onto the end of the school year in June. There’s also one snow makeup day.