We Need To Talk About McCall's Teacher Attendance

The Issue Is Growing

McCall's teacher attendance is leaving students with many study halls a day, and this is not good. Recently, the amount of classes that are left without subs every day has increased drastically! Even back  in January, when we had a staffing issue, teachers were showing up to school more. Now, absences are frequent. A couple instances especially show this troublesome pattern.

For example, the Friday before Easter, McCall had almost fifty teachers absent. Students we spoke to reported having up to six study halls then! That means that they only had one class that day. Many argued that school should have been canceled, but not enough teachers were out for this to be allowed.

Secondly, on April 8th, there was not quite as many teachers absent, but the situation was worse. This was because the absences were very concentrated. For example, the 6th Grade Discovery Team, which has four teachers, had three teacher out! 

This Is Not Good!

There are many reasons that this situation is a serious problem. First of all, many kids get less work done when they are in study hall. This may leave students with homework, and almost nobody wants that. Additionally, if students fail to get their work done, they will get in trouble! 

In the third place, even though teachers sometimes leave work for students to do during their study halls, kids have no support when they are confused on topics or problems. If one does not understand an assignments directions, and their peers do not either, there is nothing that they can do! Students normally have to wait for their teachers to come back, and then may get a less in-depth teaching of the topic that they were working on. The quality of everyone's learning is definitely affected negatively by all of the absent teachers.

Lastly, it complicates things for janitors. When students have to stay in rooms, like the auditorium or the cafeteria, janitors cannot clean there. They should not have to adjust there cleaning! schedules because of students studying!

How Can We Fix The Problem?

Well, the solution is simply for teachers to come to work more! We do not really now why educator absences are so common at McCall now. However, maybe teachers can try a little harder not to miss school.