Franklin County educators’ absences raise questions about data collection

While it has become routine for the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) to look at student attendance rates and issue an annual report on how many days of instruction students missed at any given school, a new dataset this year is looking at the attendance rate of educators.

The data collected by the state is broken into three categories: administrators, teachers and all staff. “All staff” encompasses all staff members working within a school, and includes more positions than only teachers and administrative staff, the data explains. It also counts an absence as “missing more than half of the workday for time that falls outside of paid vacation time or district-approved professional activities.”

Statewide, school staff missed an average of 11.9 days for the 2024-2025 school year. Across Franklin County schools, the average number of days missed for all staff landed at 11.3, falling just below the state average.

“There’s a lot of nuance that goes on here, but if you think about a typical 180-day school year, and you have students missing an average 12 days a year, and you have teachers missing an average 12 days a year, for example,” DESE Data Chief Rob Curtin said. “In your 180-day school year where students have access to our amazing teachers for high-quality instruction, that number of school days comes down.”

However, school administrators in Franklin County say the data submission instructions from DESE were not clear, resulting in numbers that don’t show the full picture.

While the Gill-Montague Regional School District’s attendance rates seem to lag behind other schools in the state at 86.7%, interim Superintendent Tari Thomas noted that the numbers Gill-Montague submitted for the data collection took into account not just sick days, but also vacation, personal and even bereavement days.

“In reality, the administrators in the Gill-Montague schools, for sick time leave, maintained a daily attendance range falling between 93% [and] 98%, with total number of sick days used ranging from 16.5 on the highest end to two days total on the lowest end. The average attendance rate for administrators is 96%,” Thomas said in a statement. “As school administrative contracts are typically year-round, and include specified vacation, personal days and even bereavement days, the numbers reported were skewed to reflect all contract days rather than simply sick days.”

Pioneer Valley Regional School District Superintendent Patricia Kinsella noted that, “Whenever the state seeks to develop new datasets, there is inevitably some wrinkles that need to be ironed out.”

Across the Pioneer Valley Regional School District, staff had an attendance rate of 90.8%, having missed an average of 16.8 days for the 2024-2025 school year. This is five days, or one school week, more than the state average. Kinsella expressed disappointment with the rate, but noted she anticipates staff attendance will increase in the coming years.

“When people are enjoying their work and they work in a place that’s affirming with great leadership and great colleagues, people want to come to work,” Kinsella said. “I’m confident we’ll see our attendance rates increase in the next two years.”

Hawlemont Regional School District saw the highest reported staff attendance rate in the county at 97.1%, or an average of 5.3 missed days of school for the 2024-2025 school year. This is 3.7% higher than the state average and 3.4% higher than the county average.

Hawlemont’s sister district, Mohawk Trail, reported an attendance rate of 95.6%, with staff missing an average of 7.7 days. Superintendent Sheryl Stanton said she believes the district’s high attendance rate stems from its efforts to support staff and help them grow as educators.

“We have very talented and dedicated staff. Our schools are places where we create an environment where all belong,” Stanton wrote in an email. “We create opportunities for our staff to take leadership roles, such as instructional leadership teams and professional learning communities. These allow staff to broaden their work and support each other.”

At Franklin County Technical School, staff attendance is 94.5%, with staff missing an average of 10 days for the 2024-2025 school year. In Erving Elementary School, the attendance rate for staff is 93.6%, with an average of 11.2 days absent.

Greenfield’s teaching staff members were absent an average of 14.1 days a year — about two days more than the state average — making for a roughly 92% attendance rate, while administrators had an average 96% attendance rate, missing 8.2 days during the 2024-2025 school year.

In Rowe, school staff were in class 5.7 days more than the state average. The school had an attendance rate of 96.4%, with staff missing an average of 6.2 days for the 2024-2025 school year. Rowe Elementary School Principal Jon Friedman attributes this to the commitment of the staff members and the culture of the school.

“It sounds cliche, but [former Principal Bill Knittle] created a culture where teachers feel valued and feel like they have an impact on the school,” Friedman said.

He added that the data only counted full days missed, and Rowe staff are good at trying to schedule any doctor’s appointments or other necessary absences for early morning or late afternoon, so they do not have to miss a full day of teaching.

“Our teachers recognize that getting to appointments from Rowe is about an hour. They do an incredible job of scheduling things early in the morning or later in the day so they only miss an hour or two at the begging and end,” Friedman said. “Our staff here really work hard because they know them not being here has an impact on curriculum and learning.”

Elizabeth Zielinski, superintendent of the Ralph C. Mahar Regional and Union 73 school districts, said her statistics indicate an average of 13.7 days of missed work. But, she said, the numbers should come with a disclaimer because education is a female-dominated field, and maternity leave and other related absences are big contributing factors.

At the southern end of the county, Frontier Regional School District’s staff attendance rates were slightly above the state average at 94.4%, missing an average of 10.3 days in the 2024-2025 school year, about a day and a half less than the statewide average. Administrators had a 95.6% attendance rate while the rate for teachers came in slightly below at 95%.

Superintendent Darius Modestow said the data, while accurate, ignores outliers that skew attendance rates in small districts, like teachers battling a serious illness, recovering from an accident, undergoing cancer treatment or taking parental leave.

“If I have 15 teachers in an elementary school and one is on maternity leave for three months, that’s a lot of absences to the total percentage. [DESE] should have a system to remove these types of outliers,” Modestow wrote in an email on Thursday.

Modestow claimed an “unfair, unspoken narrative” of teachers taking unnecessary time off underlies the reporting, “which is both insulting to the profession and disconnected from the reality of working in schools” given that educators are in daily contact with the flu, COVID-19, strep throat and other ailments. He added that life events like funerals and caring for sick children at home also lead teachers to use personal time, and the data does not distinguish between these pressing absences and others.

Modestow said the side-by-side data of administration and teacher attendance rates “ignores the huge structural difference” of administrators typically working 261-day contracts, while teachers work 182-day contracts, and administrators therefore having broader flexibility for the use of their sick and personal time.

“Even though our numbers are ‘good,’ they don’t tell an accurate story,” Modestow wrote in an email. “I absolutely agree with the core concern when a teacher is out, instruction is not easily replaced by a substitute. Frequent absences do impact learning. We take that seriously. But again, the message of sharing this data doesn’t feel supportive of the hardworking teachers or the profession in general. How many other professions publicly post attendance data like this? Are we going to start publishing sick time for police officers next and line it up with crime rates? There’s a selective scrutiny happening here that doesn’t exist in other public safety or public service professions.”