Absenteeism is a serious problem in our schools. Paying children or their families to go to school is not a serious solution.
State Rep. Bill Seitz, a Cincinnati Republican, has proposed awarding bonuses to kindergarteners and ninth-graders as an experiment in generating school attendance.
The cost, about $1.5 million over two years, is such a pittance that the usually flinty Mr. Seitz acts like the cost is hardly worth mentioning.
In Ohio, post-pandemic absenteeism is 29 percent for kindergarteners and 31 percent for ninth-graders. As one local example, at Reynolds School in Toledo, chronic absenteeism was 62 percent last school year. For Toledo Public Schools overall, it was 42.5 percent. Chronic absenteeism was 26.6 percent statewide.
It’s a problem that needs to be addressed seriously and now, not with frivolous tinkering.
Under the Attendance Incentive Pilot Program for kindergarten and ninth-grade students, students or their parents might receive biweekly payments of $25, quarterly payments of $150, or annual payments of $500. The money would go to the kindergartners’ parents while the ninth-graders would share in the dollars with their parents.