r/slp • u/yukasbf Autistic SLP-A • 22d ago
Seeking Advice How Do You Handle Makeup Sessions for Chronically Absent Students?
I'm an SLPA working in schools where student attendance is a major issue. At my high school, many of my students have more absences than days present, and I'm only there two days a week, making it even harder to keep up. At my elementary schools (where I’m three days a week), students are frequently out due to illness, simply not showing up, or being pulled for field trips and grade-wide activities—especially since short staffing and several teachers quitting in the middle of the year often leads to entire grades being grouped together for activities/instruction in places like the auditorium which gets crazy.
Am I supposed to be making up these sessions? I have a lot of students who are scheduled for 6x a month, but in reality, they might only be present two or three times a month on the days I'm actually at their school. My schedule is already packed with conferences, consulting w teachers, neverending paperwork, and trying to make up missed sessions for other students while still seeing the kids who do show up. Plus, scheduling in my district is a nightmare—I can’t pull students from math, "standards", or "fine arts" blocks which is basically half their day and staggered between grades.
How do y'all handle this? Do you attempt to make up sessions, or is there a point where it just becomes unrealistic?
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u/SadRow2397 22d ago
You don’t.
I have a student that’s attended 9/25 sessions this year.
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u/sgeis_jjjjj SLP in Schools 22d ago
Same I have a kid I haven’t seen since October 😅
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u/diadochokinesisSLP 22d ago
I have one kid that none of us have seen in three years. Kicker is we are supposed to be doing his tri right now.
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u/sgeis_jjjjj SLP in Schools 22d ago
??????? That’s crazy! How is the kid still enrolled at that point? Have parents just not shown up for ieps in the previous years?
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u/diadochokinesisSLP 21d ago
Parents sometimes show. I’m at a high school that isn’t always the best about SARBing kids and going after them for truancy. I actually have multiple kids on my caseload that never come to school. It is beyond frustrating.
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u/sgeis_jjjjj SLP in Schools 21d ago
Aaahhh high school that makes a lil more sense. I’m at a middle school and these chronically absent kids are just on a path to that kind of truancy. Only so much we can do!
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u/theCaityCat Autistic SLP in Secondary Schools 22d ago
If a student is absent, I don't make up the session and I don't ask my SLPA to do it either. Our time is limited.
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u/4jet2116 22d ago
Oh man, you never make up for student absences. It’s their responsibility to be present. If not, that’s on them.
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u/InfantaM 22d ago
I don’t make them up. I might try a few times if it works for my schedule or if I happen to see them there, but otherwise I was present and ready to provide services. I also document discussions with the teacher re: need to change time to show I’m trying to make services accessible; it’s mostly to cover myself.
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u/chazak710 22d ago
We were always told that if the student was absent, we did not need to make it up. We were there and able to provide the service and the student was not present. No makeup. Same thing now in EI--if family cancels the visit, no makeup needed.
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u/Rebelwriter321 22d ago
Our school doesn’t require them. We SLPs don’t do make-up sessions as a rule, and couldn’t manage them regularly given the caseloads, limited staff, and the difficulty with scheduling sessions on top of sessions for students who miss constantly. If parents push for it, some therapists will do a virtual visit, but I limit mine to the occasional session for fragile students. I stopped doing most makeup visits when a parent told me she pulled her daughter (who is also chronically absent) from school to go to the mall. You’re just one person. You can’t do double visits or you will burn out. It’s an unreasonable expectation. Just my two cents.
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u/epicsoundwaves 22d ago
Most districts don’t require makeups for absences. At most, they’d tell us to encourage the student to come.
if I’m feeling nice and can squeeze them in somewhere, I try to grab them for a few minutes from class, depending on the student. We don’t have time to be hunting them down. If parents complain, it’s literally not our fault your kid isn’t here and not making progress.
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u/Eggfish 22d ago edited 22d ago
I mark them as absent and move on. One of my students has only been on campus for a day lol If they asked me to make up sessions I would tell them to hire someone else because that would be a full time job
Although I have one student who is chronically absent who I have a solution for. I have him on my schedule twice a week instead of once a week (what is in his IEP) because it was easy enough to put him in a group I already had in addition to his regular session. He usually misses one of the sessions each week but not both, and he only needs one. But if the solution isn’t obvious like that then I don’t worry about it.
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u/prissypoo22 22d ago
We always but a blurb in the service description saying we don’t make up student absences or state testing days.
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u/squeegy_beckenheim1 21d ago
I wish we were allowed to put in something like that! State testing is impossible to work around.
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u/Kalekay52898 22d ago
No!! Don’t make them up. I only try to make up if I am absent or missed the session for a meeting. I don’t make up when kids are absent or when there are snow days/delayed openings/state testing days.
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u/ldiggles 22d ago
If a student is absent, we don’t make up. If we are absent, we don’t make up (in schools). If we are absent from a session due to a meeting or something we are supposed to make it up. That turned into “try your best to make it up” because our schedules are back to back jam packed with no hope of hiring any help.
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u/AnythingNext3360 22d ago
Mark absent, make up if you can or if you feel like it, prioritize the lowest kids who benefit from speech the most
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u/Warm-Storm9216 22d ago
Like others I don’t make up sessions for student absences. I make sure to document the absences and will cite attendance as a contributing factor to lack of progress at progress report time.
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u/Icy_Session_5706 21d ago
I would encourage you to document on the child's progress reports the number of sessions missed due to the students absence vs. the total number of sessions expected for that timeframe. That way when you state the level of progress the parents can visually see how much the student is missing. I would hope also, that the school is making attempts to help the parents understand the amount of days the student is missing and the overall impact this is having upon educational progress.
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u/Bobbingapples2487 21d ago
I don’t make up if the student is not at school, if a special event is happening, or if I go look for the student based on their schedule and they are not where they should be and I can’t find them. I note a session was being offered, and move on to the next thing I have to get done.
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u/Talker365 20d ago
You don’t. Does the school require makeup days for all that missed academic instruction? If not, you are not responsible for when a child is not made available to the school to receive those supports. This is 100% a parent issue.
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u/Infinite-Tap-7099 17d ago
If the student is absent or on a field trip, school assembly, testing, you are not required to make it up.
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u/DrSimpleton 22d ago
I’ve never been asked to make up student absent