You might have noticed something different about Austin High School this year.

The sea of students migrating between classrooms seems larger, classes seem to have more students, the hallways seem noisier.

No, the high school hasn't experienced a huge increase in the number of enrolled students, but the students they do have are coming to school more often.

"Last year, on average, 78 percent of our students were in school," AHS principal Joseph Brown says. "That meant that on any given day, about 22 percent of the student body was absent. It was just out of line in my opinion. I thought it was in the crisis stage and it was wearing down the faculty."

In an effort to remedy the situation, Brown says the high school administrators collected attendance policies from all the Big 9 schools and tailored the attendance policy at AHS to be more similar to those.

The first step was to require written notes from the parents or guardians of absent students. "Those are put into a file and … this way, we have written documentation. We have had a few cases where parents come in and want to see their child's attendance folder and one says 'I did not write this,' but there are very few of those cases," Brown says.

Brown says they also noticed most of the schools they studied "require students to be at school a minimum of 90 percent of the school year. That's where we set our target, too. We only allow nine absences … though some things don't count, like if a student is at court or if they are seeking medical attention with the nurse, if they're at the doctor's office or are absent for a school-related activity like sports or debate tournaments," he explains.

At the beginning of this school year, they implemented the plan and crossed their fingers and, to everyone's relief, it worked. "So far this year, our attendance has averaged at 94 percent. We've had days with perfect attendance and in fact, the last two classes I observed, the classes had perfect attendance," Brown says. "It just goes to show that if you set high standards," the students will try to meet those standards.

He says hopes to continue to have higher attendance rates "and I have a feeling they will be," and would like to see the average be at 95 to 97 percent. "Last year, we sometimes had 260 students (out of 1,200) gone and this year we average about 70 to 75 students and I would like to see that down to 20 to 25 a day, at the maximum."

After all, he says, good attendance correlates with higher grades, while poor attendance rates correlates with low grades. When more people succeed and do well in school, society will continue to improve, he says.

He also hopes businesses who consider hiring high school students will recognize the importance of school attendance. "I would encourage employers who are thinking of hiring a student to get that student's permission and look at their attendance rate. If more and more businesses required that it, I think it would send a stronger message that attendance is an important factor," he says. "In the real world, you can't just not show up for your job without telling anyone for three or four days and not get fired."

Amanda L. Rohde can be reached at 434-2214 or by e-mail at :mailto:amanda.rohde@austindailyherald.com