01.26.01

By Jay-Anne Casuga

Raising the number of public school attendance officers and obtaining state funds for at-risk 4-year-olds topped the agenda of the Senate Subcommittee on Public Education’s Wednesday meeting.

Due to the absence of patrons and the limited 15-minute time period, the committee fully could discuss only two bills during the session.

The committee unanimously voted, 5-0, to pass a bill, introduced by Sen. Charles J. Colgan, D-Manassas, that would establish minimum staffing level requirements for attendance officers and secretaries.

"We recognize that we are able to improve student achievement," said Peggy Wells, legislative assistant to Colgan, who was unable to attend the meeting. "But we need to have those students in the classroom learning."

In Prince William County, schools notify parents during their child’s first four absences in accordance with laws passed in 1999, which aimed to improve student attendance in the commonwealth.

Usually, school staff members contact parents, but due to the lack of attendance officers, teachers have had to assume the responsibility.

"We are pulling teachers away from their instructional time," said Clarice Torian, director of student services for Prince William County Schools. "And that is not a good thing in our opinion."

After a student’s fifth absence, Torian said, attendance officers make an attendance improvement plan specifically for the student. The officers, she said, are the only ones who can make the plans for students.

But, she said, problems arise from the fact that Prince William County has only eight attendance officers to serve 55,000 students.

"That is a tremendous task because we do have a number of students who have reached that point," Torian said. "We need additional staff for full implementation to really have adequate impact that we need on attendance."

If the bill passes, Prince William County alone could see at least one attendance secretary for each of their high schools and middle schools, for a total of 20, and part-time secretaries for its 44 elementary schools.

"I think this is a good example of where this legislative body passed legislation, but we really don’t fully understand or listen sometimes as to what the final impact will be," said Sen. R. Edward Houck, D-Spotsylvania, referring to the attendance laws passed two years earlier.

The committee voted to report Colgan’s bill to the full Senate Education and Health Committee with a recommendation to refer it to the Senate Finance Committee. If the legislation passes this session, the Board of Education will include the number of attendance officers as one of a school’s requirements for accreditation by 2003.

In another motion, the committee unanimously voted for legislation that would allot $8.7 million in state grants to educational programs for at-risk 4-year-olds.

Currently, 54 schools divisions across the state implement these programs using federal and local funds. Since schools use federal money for the program, the state does not provide additional funding.

"This is a gross inequality," said Sen. Stephen D. Newman, R-Lynchburg, the patron of the bill, which would allow schools to use state money for the programs and then use federal money for other expenses. "I don’t necessarily want, at the end of the day, to pay more than what we’re paying now, but we want to make it so everybody’s equal."

The committee reported the bill to the full education and health committee with an amendment for the state to cover 60 percent of the 4-year-old programs’ cost.