LIBERTY — While discussing the perennial problem of student and teacher absenteeism Thursday, an Amite County school board member made an unsubstantiated claim that some teachers are telling students not to come to class on Fridays.
Board Member Jimmy Burns asked for a comparison of unexcused absences on Mondays through Thursdays versus Fridays.
“I’m not sure about that,” Superintendent Scotty Whittington said.
“You might want to check into that,” Burns said. “You got teachers who are telling students not to come to school on Fridays.”
The claim surprised Whittington.
“No, they’re not supposed to be doing that,” Whittington said.
“Well, I’m telling you they are,” Burns said.
“Well, I’m saying it in open meeting: If I find out a teacher is doing this, that goes against the code of ethics and could result in the teacher being fired, and I’m the fella that’ll fire you,” Whittington said.
“And I’m the fella that’s telling you it’s happening,” Burns said.
Burns never elaborated on how he knew or what teacher was doing this, even with the crowd urging him to discuss it during the meeting.
During his monthly report to the board, Whittington said absenteeism remains high.
“We’ve been chasing after that 3 percent for seven years since I’ve been here,” Whittington said. “The experts say if your absences are under 3 precent your test scores will be better.”
He said Amite County has yet to make it that low.
“Unexcused absences are the ones hurting us,” Whittington said. “But two months we had a reason — we were hit hard with the flu.”
Whittington also addressed student grades from first half of the spring semester. Graphs showed that even though the district still has work to do, it’s moving in the right direction, and Whittington said he believes progress will be shown.
“We’re running pretty well on all of them,” he said.
He expressed concern about fourth-grade reading scores, as well as some seventh- and eighth-grade courses.
On the fourth-graders, “These are the students who took the third-grade reading test last year and passed,” he said. “I don’t know, it defies imagination.”
He said other problem areas include eighth-grade science, seventh-grade English and eighth-grade English, history, algebra and biology.
“You keep saying we’re making progress, but what are we doing to try to fix the problem?” Burns asked Whittington.
“Well, the principals ...,” Whittington said before being cut off.
“Don’t tell me about the principals. What are the teachers doing to fix the problems?” Burns said. “Are they doing it before the report cards come out or on a day-to-day scale?”
“They’re supposed to be doing it on a day-to-day scale,” Whittington said.
“I know what the problem is,” Burns said. “The students won’t come to school and that’s a big factor and the teachers won’t come to work. When you get to the absenteeism, you’ll see the problem.”
