Missing two days of school used to disappear into the usual pile of attendance paperwork. At Benjamin Franklin Middle School, somebody now notices right away and starts asking questions.
According to a Bucks County Beacon report by Ben Bennett, that simple change helped the Bristol Township school cut total absences from 5,485 in the 2024-25 school year to 4,385 in 2025-26. That is 1,100 fewer missed school days. For a problem schools across Pennsylvania have been wrestling with since the pandemic, that is a real number, not a glossy brochure line.
Fourteen students missed the first two days
The Beacon reported that by the second day of this school year, 14 students at Benjamin Franklin had already missed both days. Mike Klemp, the school’s student success advocate, started calling families. He got answers from all but three, and he said staff learned the reason behind about 85 percent of those early absences.
That is the piece a lot of schools skip. They wait for the computer to spit out a warning. Benjamin Franklin went the other way. The middle school made attendance a focus ahead of the 2025-26 year, according to the Beacon, and built a small team around it: Klemp, school counselor Kasey Kenworthy, assistant principal Bob Kinney, principal Kevin Boles, and home and school visitor Suzanne Skinner.
None of this sounds fancy, which is probably the point. It is phone calls, email, follow-up, and knowing which kid is starting to slide before the pattern gets baked in. The Beacon reported that staff wanted families to hear from a real person before they got the kind of letter that makes people feel like they are already in trouble.
Bristol Township staff tracked absences day by day
According to the Beacon, Klemp checks attendance every day and keeps a spreadsheet so the school can spot repeat absences fast. When a student misses multiple days in a row, staff reach out to a parent or guardian right away. Kenworthy told the Beacon that some parents do not even realize a doctor’s note can keep some absences from being marked unexcused.
That part lines up with state rules. The Pennsylvania Department of Education and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania publish attendance and truancy guidance for schools, and the Beacon reported that Pennsylvania law requires a school attendance improvement plan letter after six unexcused absences. Those letters can read like legal paperwork, because in a way they are. Benjamin Franklin’s staff were trying to get in front of that.
Kinney told the Beacon the school did not invent some miracle fix. Staff were simply being intentional and staying on top of attendance every day. That is less flashy than a new app or a consultant presentation, but it also sounds a lot more believable. If a student is missing class because of transportation trouble, family stress, illness, or plain old avoidance, a quick human conversation usually beats a form letter sent after the fact.
What This Means for Bucks County Residents
Benjamin Franklin’s numbers are local, but the problem is not. As background, the U.S. Department of Education and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have both described chronic absenteeism as one of the stubborn leftovers from the pandemic years. Students got used to being away from the building, families got used to juggling around school, and a lot of districts never fully got back to the old routine.
For parents in Bristol Township and the Levittown area, the message is pretty plain: answer the call from school, send the note, and do not assume a few missed days will just disappear into the system. For other Bucks County districts, this is a reminder that attendance problems are often about relationships before they are about punishment.
There is also a county angle here that goes beyond one middle school office. Families dealing with housing trouble, transportation problems, food insecurity, or behavioral health issues usually need more than an attendance warning, and Bucks County government lists many of the public services schools end up pointing families toward. A school can make the first call. It cannot fix every problem inside that house.
If you have been following our Levittown coverage or reading more local stories, you have probably noticed how often school issues spill into work schedules, child care, transportation, and the rest of daily life. Attendance is one of those boring topics that stops being boring when grades drop, meetings pile up, and a family realizes the hole got deep fast.
Bristol Township students carry those habits to Truman
The Beacon reported that Benjamin Franklin staff are also thinking ahead to what happens after middle school. Boles said students who build bad attendance habits before ninth grade carry them to Harry S. Truman High School, where the consequences are tougher and the path back gets steeper.
The school has used some incentives, too. According to the Beacon, students can earn raffle tickets through the school’s positive behavior program for showing up on time to first period. Staff also told the Beacon they sometimes get creative and, in some cases, will even pick students up at home to help get them into the building.
That does not mean the problem is solved. Kinney said as much in the Beacon report. But cutting 1,100 absence days in one year is the kind of result that gets other principals paying attention. No board vote was attached to this story, and there was no big districtwide announcement in the report. The next test is simpler than that: whether Benjamin Franklin can keep the number moving the right way this year.
Parents who want the district’s current attendance rules should check school notices early and ask about excused absences before a small problem turns into a paper chase in the middle of the semester.
Sources and Further Reading
- Bucks County Beacon – Original report on Benjamin Franklin Middle School’s attendance effort.
- Pennsylvania Department of Education – State education agency with attendance and truancy guidance.
- Commonwealth of Pennsylvania – State government homepage with official public guidance and services.
- U.S. Department of Education – Federal education agency with background on attendance trends.
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – Federal public health agency tracking school-related health and attendance issues.
- Bucks County government – County services and public resources for Bucks County residents.
