While still struggling with chronic absenteeism among students post COVID-19, Thornton Township High School District 205 is tackling teacher attendance issues with $5,000 bonuses.
“Thousands of more students have had their own teachers in front of them, teaching their curriculum, building trust, and you can’t overstate how important that is to our learning, our culture and our stability,” District 205 Superintendent Nathaniel Cunningham said Thursday.
The bonuses for teachers present for 95% or more of the school year, or absent for about nine days, were first instituted for the 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 school years in negotiations with the district’s faculty union.
They were later extended through the current school year as part of a separate agreement with the union. The District 205 faculty union did not respond to requests for comment.
The bonus incentive rewards people for doing the right thing during exceedingly difficult times, Cunningham told the school board June 8, 2022, according to the board’s meeting minutes.
Cunningham said he is unsure whether the district will opt to extend the bonuses for another year, “but the way it’s working, it looks like the teachers like it and we’re getting a bonus for it.”
The district’s bonus in exchange for bonuses, Cunningham said, is more consistency in classrooms.
In 2022, about 54% of teachers had 10 or more absences, slightly lowering to 49% in 2023, according to the Illinois State Board of Education’s district report card. Statewide, about 34% of teachers miss 10 or more days.
The district saw a major boost in teacher attendance, with only 21% of teachers missing 10 or more days in 2024 and 20% so far in 2025.
Teacher attendance is considered critical for instruction and giving students adequate attention, Cunningham said. While teachers are entitled to take sick days and other leave, he said “we wanted to reward those teachers who went above and beyond.”
“Teacher attendance matters for kids,” Cunningham said. “At a high poverty district like ours, students rely on strong relationships, consistent instruction. ”
The district also sees some cost savings in hiring fewer substitute teachers, Cunningham said.
“Our kids deserve consistent, high quality instruction, and this program helps make that possible,” Cunningham said.
District 205, which includes Thornton High School in Harvey, Thornwood High School in South Holland, and Thornridge High School in Dolton, educates about 6,000 students, 81% of whom are designated low income.
The district did not say how much it has spent on attendance bonuses, but based on Illinois Report Card data 270 of the district’s roughly 340 teachers received the bonuses, costing taxpayers $1.4 million this year alone.
Meanwhile, chronic absenteeism among District 205 students has declined slightly, but remains significantly higher than before the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to the Illinois Report Card, student chronic absenteeism since the pandemic hit its peak in 2022, with 30% of District 205 students missing 10% or more of the school year. In 2023, 28% of students were chronically absent, decreasing to 26% in 2024 and 25% in 2025. The current rate is in line with the state average.
Cunningham said chronic absenteeism is something the district is working on, “because there was such a change after the pandemic.”
“Working on connecting again with your students and your community — and part of this program also helps because the teachers are consistently there, and that consistently helps kids want to come back to school,” Cunningham said.
While Cunningham said he’s unaware of any other school districts offering bonuses for employee attendance, the Tribune in 2016 reported more experimentation taking place in school districts with linking compensation and student achievement.
What has long been the status quo in teacher compensation are raises for experience and adding education credentials, such as a master’s degree.
Matthew Springer, an assistant professor of public policy and education at Vanderbilt University who has researched performance-based pay for educators, told the Tribune that that approach goes back decades. It aims to standardize pay for educators and fix inequities in pay based on race, gender, nepotism and other factors, said
That traditional system results in the same type of raises for teachers, “regardless of their effectiveness,” Springer said. “It is inefficient, it is broken — but we don’t know how to fix it yet.”
Bonus and incentive programs in other states have produced varied results, some short-lived, Springer said.
“They are so controversial that they are likely to come under some type of scrutiny,” he said.
ostevens@chicagotribune.com
