Finding a Balance, Part II: Attendance

As I've already mentioned in previous posts, I serve a dual role on the school's leadership team. I am department chair and I am also the grade level chair. As the grade-level chair I work closely with the assistant principal and other members of the administrative team in order to ensure the smooth operation of the entire grade level. Recently, I had a conversation with the administration about teacher absences. In particular, we talked about handling chronic teacher absences. In my mind, when a teacher is sick or when a teacher is unable to work due to illness of some sort, whether that illness be intermittent or whether it is long-term then that teacher cannot work and I think administrators should respect that. However, on the administrative aspect of things, school administrators have the responsibility to operate the school. Chronic teacher absences impairs the smooth functioning of a school building. In addition, it also impacts instruction.

I'm just wondering about how one would approach this sort of issue to a teacher and not be insensitive to what they are going through? I am still a teacher and I still wear my teacher hat daily and my teacher hat is saying “well administration needs to understand.” But only other hand if a school is getting constantly reprimanded because of teacher absences then what is that administration to do? How do you address this with staff members? I guess the reason that I'm questioning about this or wondering about this is because as a prospective school administrator, this is probably going to be one of the things that comes up frequently…teacher attendance.


I'm not sure if I want to be one of those administrators that always does things by the book but on the other hand I'm not sure. I would want someone to have some grace and mercy with me if I have some attendance issues. So I guess I'm just really wondering about again how do you find that balance between having grace with someone or some people and advocating for the students and school in terms of instruction. 

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