INCREASING TEACHER ATTENDANCE IN A SOUTHEASTERN NORTH CAROLINA SCHOOL DISTRICT TO GENERATE FISCAL SAVINGS

Abstract

In many school districts, a lack of funding has become one of the greatest issues to overcome and the high rate of teacher absenteeism rate adds to the financial burdens. In this problem of practice study, data collected by a southeastern North Carolina district's fiscal monitoring team and secondary data available from other educational sources are used to answer five research questions. The researcher used previously collected data to: identify the cost of substitute teacher pay for the district compared to the cost of substitute teacher pay for the state of North Carolina and in comparison to the focus district's neighboring systems; determine the reasons for teacher absences; determine calendar trends for reported teacher absences; identify trends in teacher absences dependent upon school type; and identify the fiscal, instructional, and student achievement effects of high teacher absenteeism in the district. From the research, recommendations for possible processes to help deter teacher absences to decrease the amount of substitute teacher pay are offered.