Planned Student Absences in IC

Barrington 220 has added a custom attendance program to the standard Infinite Campus attendance program, and the feature grows in popularity daily. The custom feature allows parents to report student absences via the Parent Portal 24/7. Parents enjoy the convenience of reporting absences at any hour of the day and they have the option to report absences for more than one day at a time. Many parents have already reported upcoming planned student absences for Winter Break.

To access the feature, parents log in to the Parent Portal, select their student, answer a couple of questions, and enter the date(s) the student will be absent from school. The parent receives a confirmation email regarding the absence, and the school office receives the absence report for immediate processing, eliminating the need for parent phone calls. The custom program works best when parents, office, and teachers have processed attendance prior to the automated absence calls generated at 10:00 a.m. daily.

Some parents have been surprised to learn that teachers were not learning of the planned student absences until the date of the absence. Parent interest in communicating earlier with teachers, using the one-stop method through the Parent Portal, has led to the increased use of another custom program designed for blended learning courses.

The addition of blended learning classes created the need for tracking the days students would have the option of attending class. Blended learning teachers are provided an additional grade book link to report blended learning days for individual students and/or class. The same custom program was expanded to allow for tracking the days BHS students attend an ARC class.

Today we are making the custom program available to all Barrington 220 teachers for the purpose of viewing student absences reported days or weeks in advance. Classroom teachers may choose to use the Custom Links and Reports features to View Future Absences and Enter BL Attendance, to allow teachers to know in advance how many students have a future planned absence reported by parents. Only absences reported in advance by parents display. 

Step-by-step instructions on using the custom link to View Future Absences and Enter BL Attendance can be found here.

We hope you enjoy the new option for staying informed regarding future student absences. Stay connected to learn more about planned enhancements in this area!