NATCHEZ &045;&045; &uot;Headhunters&uot; will no longer disrupt classes in Mississippi’s public schools.

A decision made by the state auditor’s office to stop manually counting students for attendance records is something Natchez-Adams Assistant Superintendent Larry Little said was overdue.

The workers from the auditor’s office, who Little said have always been called headhunters, have been replaced by computers.

The Mississippi Student Information System has been in use in Natchez schools and on the state level for several years and will now be entirely responsible for keeping the attendance records used to determine funding.

Previously counters from the state physically came to each classroom several times a year, stood in the doorway of the room and counted each head. Questions were asked about empty chairs and students unaccounted for were marked as such.

&uot;We’re out of the head count business,&uot; State Auditor Phil Bryant told the Associated Press. &uot;When I came in in 1996, I couldn’t believe we were still going to every school in Mississippi and counting every child to judge average daily attendance. That was as an ineffective way of determining ADA as we could find. Children were absent. Children were out sick. Children were out playing.&uot;

On the district level, Natchez-Adams schools enter attendance information daily into the SAMS database. Once a month that information is sent to MSIS at the state level.

Technology coordinator Nick Peterman said it took some time to work through the kinks in the programs but the state is now at a point where it can add a new category of information to the MSIS server each year. The database records not only attendance but also disciplinary actions and grades.

&uot;In some cases it has made things easier and in some cases it has made things more difficult,&uot; Peterman said.

The information on MSIS can be accessed by other schools when a student transfers, cutting out the delay in sending paperwork, Little said.

The auditor’s office will still occasionally send physical headhunters to schools to verify the information recorded on the computers.

School enrollment determines the amount of funding the district gets from the state. Under federal No Child Left Behind legislation attendance is also used to measure school and district performance.

If a school drops below 93 percent average attendance for two consecutive years it must face a series of consequences. In a report at last month’s school board meeting Little told the board that Natchez High School and Robert Lewis Middle School did not have 93 percent attendance for the month of October. The schools have until the end of the year to bring the numbers up.