Miller wasn’t familiar with the letters sent home by the two schools, only saying that the board has a policy in place to alert individual parents if their child misses 15 or more days of school.

Both letters sent out by Groh and Sandhills offer parents tips:

· Make sure your child arrives on time and remains until the end of the day so they do not miss out on any learning.

· As much as possible, schedule appointments for before or after school, or on weekends.

· Schedule your vacations during the school calendar year (seasonal break in December and March break).

· Reinforce with your child that being punctual and attending school everyday increases their chances for success.

· Be a good role model for your child when it comes to attendance and punctuality.

Kitchener school board trustee Mike Ramsay questions whether there’s any correlation between student and teacher absenteeism and wonders how people can credibly encourage kids to show up when their teachers aren’t doing so.

According to a recent report, teachers at Waterloo Region’s two local public school boards called in sick for just over 10 days on average during the last school year. The boards were forced to take the unusual approach of filling the gap by hiring non-certified emergency replacements to supervise classrooms.

“It's concerning; any type of absenteeism is concerning,” said Ramsay. “We’ve had a huge increase in the number of teachers that are off also.”

Ramsay wouldn't attribute absenteeism to a specific factor — “Kudos to the administration of the schools for trying to tackle it,” he said.

Letters sent home to parents earlier this week encourage parents to look at their child's attendance from the first-term report card that was sent home a few weeks ago. “We encourage you to have a discussion with your child about this important issue.”

John Shewchuk, chief managing officer for the Waterloo Catholic District School Board, said he wasn’t aware of any measures being taken by the Catholic board to address student absenteeism at this time.

"We do closely monitor student attendance and have a number of processes in place to engage with them when the number of absences start to creep up," Shewchuk said. "Generally speaking, our level of persistent student absenteeism is below the provincial average. Some years we'll have more absences than others due to the level of virulence of the various winter bugs that float around. But outside of those, there are absences for other reasons, and those are the ones that sometimes require special attention."

That special attention can come in a variety of forms, from the involvement of student success teachers, to the use of social workers.

"But, as with any issue such as this, it makes more sense to work upstream and address any potential issues of persistent absenteeism before they turn into real absenteeism," Shewchuk said, adding, "As we speak, we are actively working to build specific goals and actions into our new well-being plan to add a solid measure of prevention and mitigation into the mix."

With files from Metroland News Service