A new report is included with Lehighton Area School District workshop meeting agendas detailing the total amount of teacher absences for the prior month,

Superintendent Dr. Christina Fish said the district is using the data to spark conversations with school administrators, especially as Lehighton enters budget considerations for the next fiscal year.

“When we’re looking at costs, the substitute budget is a huge part of that,” Fish said. “We’ll look at the trends of data on staffing and talk to the teams, whether it be a subject team or a grade-level team, as to the impact that having one of their members out has on them.”

In October, the elementary center had 133 teacher absences, followed by the high school with 103 and the middle school with 69.

To date in November, 67 teachers have called off at the elementary center, 56 at the high school and 29 in the middle school.

Fridays happen to be one of the most popular days for teacher absences, with 11 teachers out at the elementary center on Nov. 11 and 13 out at the high school.

“There are certainly some trends,” Fish said. “We really want to find out what we can do to help teachers be in school. We are certainly not telling them they can’t use the vacation, sick and personal time allotted to them.”

When teachers are out, substitutes are tasked with filling the gaps. With the state still in a substitute shortage, however, teachers can be asked to give up their prep periods to cover classes in a last resort.

“Teacher absences do have an impact on the district so we want to do what we can to help them be in school as opposed to maybe taking a whole day off,” Fish said. “We talk in our comprehensive plan about school culture and part of that is morale. If a teacher is out a lot, maybe they’re getting burned out and there is something we can do to help them.”