The Cost of Perfect Attendance: What Are We Really Rewarding in Schools?

In a recent episode of The Exit Interview, Whitney Tolliver shared a story that is celebrated in education: perfect attendance as an expectation. During new staff orientation, her principal stood in front of the room and proudly declared:

She had buried both of her parentsand did not take a single day off. And if she didn't miss any work days, her staff could do the same. (See the clip here.)

The Cost of Perfect Attendance

No days off. No excuses. Perfect attendance. That moment is not rare. It is not shocking. It is normal in far too many schools. And that's the problem.

As a kid who grew up in the 80's and 90's, getting a perfect attendance award was a big deal for me. However, years later, the certificate is long gone, and for many of us, the only thing that remains is the trauma masked as "excellence"...or is that just me?

What Are We Actually Rewarding?

When we celebrate perfect attendance, feel guilty for taking days off, or guilt others who need a break, what are we actually doing?

• Ignoring grief.
• Deferred medical care. (Think dentist appointments, knee surgeries, and breast exams.)
• Skipped lunches
• Sleep fractured into survival naps.

The list never ends.

How do we disrupt the behavior in ourselves for better health and to disrupt the behavior in the next generations? Whitney described waking up at midnight to write evaluation reports because there wasn't enough time during the workday. She described making coffee; she never had the time to finish drinking (sound familiar?). She described stomach issues that led to invasive surgery, only to later question whether workplace stress had been the real cause all along.

This is not a time management issue. This is a systems design issue that we as individuals, in collectives in communities, have to disrupt for ourselves.

The Myth of Dedication

For Black educators in particular, perfect attendance carries extra weight. Many of us were raised with the "good government job" narrative: Secure the benefits. Secure the pension. Make your community proud. Endure.

For some of us, add to that the pressure of being "the only one in the room." Add perfectionism. Add code-switching. Add the silent expectation that you represent your entire race with excellence, and suddenly, taking a sick day feels like failure.

Education systems are not just rewarding attendance. They are rewarding self-abandonment.

Why This Is A Retention Crisis

Schools, universities, foundations, unions, and districts across the country are asking: Why can't we retain Black educators? But rarely ask: What are we asking them to survive? When leaders implicitly or explicitly communicate that presence matters more than wellness, we create cultures where:

• Racial battle fatigue and burnout are normalized.
• Wellness is postponed or cancelled altogether.
• Boundaries are punished

And then we are surprised when talented Black educators leave, but why? Retention is not about recruitment pipelines. It's about redesigning conditions.

To be clear: many administrators are not villains. They are buffers. They absorb pressure from the central office, accountability systems, test-score mandates, and staffing shortages. That pressure rolls downhill. However, it is important to state that without intentional healing infrastructure, fatigue remains the culture. We are talking about the education system, not a single person.

What Liberated Educators Lab Is Building

At Liberated Educators Lab, we approach this differently. We don't simply offer "support spaces." We build strategy. We work with community groups, foundations, nonprofits, and districts to design:

• Wellness and healing-informed leadership practices
• Sustainable affinity structures
• Policies that protect boundaries.
• Retention frameworks rooted in racial equity and healing.

We archive Black educator stories not as nostalgia, but as knowledge production. Stories like Whitney's are not personal testimonies. They are and always will be data for our healing and for archival justice. They reveal:

• Where systems fracture.
• Where bodies break
• Where, why, and with what weight educators walk away.

And they also reveal something else: What becomes possible when leaders choose authenticity, boundaries, and self.

The Real Question

If we stopped rewarding perfect attendance, what might we reward instead?

• Rest that prevents resignation.
• Boundaries that protect longevity.
• Leadership that filters pressure instead of transferring it.
• Excellence without perfectionism.
• Policies that honor humanity.

If we want Black educators and all educators to stay, we must stop confusing endurance with commitment. Commitment to students should not require sacrificing our bodies. Perfect attendance is not a badge of honor. Sustainable leadership is. If you are a district leader, union partner, or institutional decision-maker rethinking retention, I would welcome the opportunity to discuss it. We can't keep asking educators to survive systems that refuse to evolve.

Let's redesign what we reward.