Attendance Overview & Manual

Attendance supports exist across a range of levels and can look different from community to community.

In all cases though, a strong attendance support program is based on school-wide systems designed to increase partnership with students and families and eliminate racism as experienced in San Francisco Unified School District.  A student's attendance can be impacted for many reasons including discipline and safety concerns.

The SFUSD Attendance Overview document contains essential information and resources to support attendance processes at your school site.  

The success of attendance taking is a team effort. School site administration, teachers and staff all must work together to provide accurate and timely attendance recordings. In support of our students and families it is essential to be supportive, respectful, and build relationships to best support communication to the school when absences occur. The SFUSD Attendance Overview includes details of district best practices.

Teachers

• Teachers log into Synergy Student Information System through their password-protected login. Each teacher will take attendance via TeacherVue interface within Synergy. Each teacher must enter the attendance the first 30 minutes of the period. See the Attendance Manual for details about correcting attendance errors.

School Site Staff

• School site staff contacts teachers by phone or email to remind teachers that attendance must be posted within 30 minutes of the start of a class.
• School site staff will contact the home of all students who are absent either by a phone call to a parent/guardian and/or the auto dialer system. All original documentation (i.e., phone logs)are is maintained in the main office for audit purposes. 
• School site staff will reach out to parents /caregivers directly to inquire about the reason(s) a student was absent. School site staff will engage respectfully when communicating with students/families.

Site Administration

• School site administrators support the school site staff when necessary to ensure requirements are met for attendance taking.

There are three methods of filing attendance documenation

• File By Date
  • Documentation to be filed by date include excuse notes, tardy slips, phone logs and permits to leave

• File By Student Name
  • Documentation to be filed by student name is independent study contract and sample work.

• File By Teacher Name
  • Documentation to be filed by teacher name include Class Rosters, Period Attendance GAP and Reports By Teacher

Additional Resources:

Attendance Filing Protocol Document

The links to the Independent Study contract

Independent Study Contract - Elementary

Independent Study Contract - Secondary