Too many teachers absent, says Warwick chief

WARWICK — Supt. Philip Thornton says the Warwick schools have a teacher absenteeism problem and he wants to do something about it.

Two schools — Wyman Elementary and E.G. Robertson Elementary — have chronic absenteeism rates of 24.4 percent and 22.7 percent, respectively. Chronic teacher absenteeism is defined as missing 18 days or more of school out of a typical 180-day school year.  

Two more schools — Oakland Beach Elementary and Sherman Elementary — have rates above 20 percent.

In the 2018-2019 school year, more than 11 percent of all Warwick teachers — 100 teachers — were chronically absent, Thornton said, using data from the Rhode Island Department of Education. That said, more than a third of all teachers — 312 — missed less than five percent of school.

"While many teachers come to work on a regular basis," Thornton said, "We do have an attendance problem. The RIDE data indicates that. My goal in sharing this data with the school committee is to tackle this problem."

Thornton is focused on teacher attendance because it is one the measures the Department of Education uses to evaluate school performance as part of the department's new accountability system. This is the first year that teacher absenteeism has been included in this evaluation.

Thornton, in his presentation to the school committee this week, compared Warwick teacher absenteeism data to data from seven other districts. At the high school level, Warwick's chronic teacher absenteeism was higher than each of those districts, including Providence.

Although Thornton said he couldn't pinpoint any one reason for the high absenteeism rates, the Warwick teachers' contract is the only one in the state that includes 90 sick days.

"I raised that as a question we should look into," Thornton said. 

But Darlene Netcoh, president of the Warwick Teachers' Union, denied that the sick leave policy contributes to chronic teacher absenteeism. She said a recent financial and program audit of the schools found that the 90 days was an outlier among other teacher contracts, but said that the district's human resource department concluded there was no abuse of that policy.

Netcoh also disputes the validity of the RIDE data.

"I looked at the school with the highest absenteeism rate, Wyman," she said. "Based on my research, the numbers are wrong. I don't know where RIDE is getting its numbers. I don't know what their methodology is."

She said there are several instances where RIDE reported that no teachers were chronically absent, when, in fact, they were.

"I wouldn't cast aspersions on anyone who is out," Netcoh said.

Warwick, she said, has an aging teacher workforce.

(Correction: Darlen Netcoh's last name was misspelled on second reference in an earlier version of this story.)

— lborg@providencejournal.com

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