Best Practices for Tracking 3+ Absences per student/per class

Betsy Sidebottom
Betsy Sidebottom
Seventh Anniversary Kudos 1 Name Dropper Facilitator 1
in Blackbaud K–12 Education Solutions™ General Discussions

We are having a hard time determining the best way to to run reports/receive data for students that miss a class more than three times. Is there an easy way for this information to be automatically provided to administration? We are trying to have a report that sorts the data BY student and by class. For example, did Ella miss Algebra more than three times, and if so, what are the dates, the excuse type and comments.

The advanced lists we've built are so cumbersome. Trying to find something that's easy to read.

Comments

  • Boyd Reilly
    Boyd Reilly
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 3 Name Dropper Participant

    Betsy:

    We've setup the Conduct module. Look under Academics - Conduct. Kids get a detention after 3 tardies or absences from a class and then it resets. You can have an email sent out to all involved (or trimmed down for your needs) when a certain number of points is accumulated. So, a good option to set it up and not worrying about having to run lists to check on the status.

    Holler at me if you need any help. It can be a little complicated.

    Thanks.

    Boyd

  • Betsy Sidebottom
    Betsy Sidebottom
    Seventh Anniversary Kudos 1 Name Dropper Facilitator 1
    Thanks Boyd

    We actually have the tardies/attendances set up in the conduct setup. however, I thought you aren't able to taylor that PER CLASS. Do you know something we don't know?


    I know we can get points/infractions/set thresholds, etc based on attendance but I thought it was cumulative.


    Have you successfully set it up so it will trigger points for specific classes? For exmaple, if Ella missed Biology three times....she gets an email and consequence. We want it PER class not total.


    I was told it wasn't possible.


    Thanks for your insight!
  • Boyd Reilly
    Boyd Reilly
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 3 Name Dropper Participant

    Betsy:

    I don't. The only suggestion I would give you is to create an infraction type for each department. ie. Skipped Math Class, Skipped Science Class, etc. Granted a kid could have more than class in a department, but this would beat creating one for every class.

    Thanks.

    Boyd

  • Kathleen Sanders
    Kathleen Sanders
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 1 Name Dropper Participant

    Hi Betsy. This is probably one of the most frustrating things about attendance. Our dean wants to know the same information. How many times has a student missed a specific course? Our solution has been to run the Absence Analysis-By Student and Section Report every Friday. We enter the dates starting from the first day of school through the current date, the number of absences (5) for us, and uncheck ‘Tardy’ since we only want to know about Absences. The report generates for the entire school K-12 in alphabetical order. So we download and someone has to go through and delete all but the 9-12 students. It takes more work than it should but it gets us the info we need.

  • Scott Chrysler
    Scott Chrysler
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 K-12 Fall 2025 Product Update Briefing Badge Name Dropper

    @Boyd Reilly

    Great tip Boyd. I had never seen/noticed that column before. It will serve our needs almost perfectly.

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • Betsy Sidebottom
    Betsy Sidebottom
    Seventh Anniversary Kudos 1 Name Dropper Facilitator 1
    Thank you Boyd. This tip is GREAT! We use student reports often but I didn't realize this column was available under attendance. A great solution when the full desired report isn't available.


    Betsy
  • Kathleen Sanders
    Kathleen Sanders
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 1 Name Dropper Participant

    Boyd, you have made my day! Thank you for providing a much easier way to get the information we need.

  • John Ronan
    John Ronan
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 Name Dropper Participant

    Thanks much, Boyd. Very useful.

    Has anyone been able to break those multi-line column values into separate columns?

  • Amanda Gagne
    Amanda Gagne
    Eighth Anniversary Name Dropper Facilitator 1

    Hi Betsy - did you ever come up with a good solution for this?

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