Superintendent Andrew apologizes for incorrect Hawthorne attendance data

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – During Superintendent Comment at the April 16 School Board of Alachua County meeting, Superintendent Shane Andrew apologized to the Hawthorne community for the incorrect chronic absenteeism data that was presented at last Wednesday’s workshop.

At the April 10 School Board workshop, Chief of Equity, Inclusion, and Community Engagement Anntwanique Edwards presented a chart that showed chronic absenteeism rates for Hawthorne Middle/High School that were far out of line with other schools in the district.

When Member Tina Certain said the chart was “alarming” and asked what had been done to investigate the causes, Edwards said she did “not know the answer right now.” She said the causes could be “transportation,… suspensions, it can be kids who are sick [or] skipping.”

After Alachua Chronicle reported on the workshop , Alachua County Public Schools Public Information Officer Jackie Johnson told us that the chart had been inaccurate and that the numbers for the middle and high school populations had been combined: “In other words, chronically absent high school students were included in Hawthorne’s middle school count and vice versa. Not clarifying that was an error on our part.”

Tonight, Andrew presented an updated chart that shows the current numbers:

Andrew said, “I’d like to apologize to our Hawthorne Middle/High school administration, teachers, staff, students, parents, and the community for the inaccurate chronically absent data that we shared in our workshop last week. The data pulled and displayed for Hawthorne Middle/High School inadvertently included inactive students, and the middle and high school student data sets for chronically absent students were added together as one number. And this resulted in extremely high overall total student numbers and percentages for both the middle school and the high school.”

Chronically absent students are active students who miss more than 10% of the academic year for any reason, including unexcused, excused, and school-related absences.

Andrew concluded, “The Hawthorne Middle/High School counts, as you can see in percentages, are significantly lower than those presented last week. And I do want to take the time to honor the daily hard work of Mr. [John] Green, who is here with us this evening, the Principal of Hawthorne Middle/High School, and his team as it relates to contacting families, focusing on increasing their daily attendance rates. I want it to be known that they work diligently to reach out to families in the community and to get students to school. So again, I apologize to our Hawthorne Middle/High School stakeholders.

The post Superintendent Andrew apologizes for incorrect Hawthorne attendance data appeared first on Alachua Chronicle .