Field Guide · Chapter One
The first habit I seed every August. Attendance isn't a checkbox — it's the earliest, most honest signal a school has about a child.
You can't measure a child's growth if you don't know how many days of light they actually got. Attendance data is the baseline every other measure leans on — and it's the thing that slips first because it feels routine. Routine is exactly when the arithmetic stops being checked.
Every morning I run the same three-way check, and I never trust one source alone:
A mismatch between any two is not an annoyance; it's a child whose day got lost in transit. I resolve every single one before lunch.
| Discrepancy | Most likely cause | My first move |
|---|---|---|
| Roster has a name, sign-in doesn't | Unexcused absence | Call home before 10:00 |
| Sign-in has a name, roster doesn't | Late add / new enrollee | Verify with the office, flag to teacher |
| Sign-in says present, system says absent | Data entry lag | Confirm with the office, log the correction |
| Half-day counts disagree | Multiple dismissal points | Check each dismissal code individually |
Once the daily count is correct, the weekly view does the actual good. A child late every Tuesday isn't a Tuesday problem — it's a transportation problem, or a morning-routine problem, that only shows up as a pattern. This is why I flag, not just record.
Enter a student's late arrivals for a four-week stretch (Mon–Thu). If the pattern crosses my two red lines — three or more in a single week, or six in the month — the record earns a flag and a conversation.
"The record isn't meant to blame a family. It's meant to wake the school up early — while there's still time to help."