Recording Sunday School Attendance

Our new Sunday School President is wondering if there's anyway to get away from recording attendance via paper? I get what he means, the attendance list for Gospel Doctrine alone is ten pages long. He's wondering if there's an electronic way to keep track--in a similar way the EQ and RS are now able to keep track of home teaching.

We're hoping there's some beta program we can get into or something.

Cheers!

There is no indication that electronic role taking is in the works. The emphasis right now is on moving existing functionality from MLS to LCR which is likely to be well into next year before it's done.

Personally I have my doubts about whether electronic roles will ever be added. I think the church is hesitant to have records on their servers regarding the behavior of members, possibly for privacy reasons. HT/VT does not actually record whether someone has done their home teaching but rather whether a household was visited (be it by the assigned teachers, the presidency or someone else). So its a different kind of thing.

But perhaps electronic role taking might be added to LDS Tools sometime where the information stays local to that one device. But I haven't heard of that being in the works either.

eblood66 wrote:Personally I have my doubts about whether electronic roles will ever be added. I think the church is hesitant to have records on their servers regarding the behavior of members, possibly for privacy reasons.

+1

I think the church is hesitant to keep anything that looks like centralized records for stuff like that. In the case of paper, once it's used to create the stats, maybe it's kept, maybe not. But it never leaves the local leader who has it. It's not centralized. No risk of being viewed as a "permanent record".

You could use a spreadsheet app on a tablet to create a roll, and pass it around each week.

Sunday School attendance statistics are not included on the quarterly report! Unless the Sunday School attendance records are actually being used by the Sunday School Presidency, the teachers, or the bishopric, I see no reason to keep taking roll in Sunday School.

Gathering attendance information is one of the roles of the Sunday school secretary, and the Sunday school organization should be using it to help them increase participation (Handbook 2, 12.2.4). The ward clerk usually doesn't need to worry about Sunday school attendance, like he does attendance at Relief Society or Priesthood meetings, but the Sunday school presidency should. And, of course, it may be helpful for the Sunday school presidency to bring attendance into the ward council discussion.

What I do in EQ is I downloaded a PDF copy of the attendance rolls, then I use the app "Adobe Fill and Sign" to tick the boxes right beside their names.

Hope this would help.

maligonaries wrote:What I do in EQ is I downloaded a PDF copy of the attendance rolls, then I use the app "Adobe Fill and Sign" to tick the boxes right beside their names.
Hope this would help.

Just tested and it works surprisingly well. Thanks for sharing.

Hi what I do is make two gospel doctrine classes one with regular attendees and the other ones that have not been for quite sometime. I put the regular attendees list first and the other backing on to it. If they turn up in a quarter I move them from the not attending to the regular attendees list works well. Just have to train the recorders, especially now that next year Sunday school might be used in quarterly report?

How about just passing around a blank sheet of lined paper with a pen, and have them sign their name. There is your list, and it should be on one to two pages of paper.

waynecooke wrote:How about just passing around a blank sheet of lined paper with a pen, and have them sign their name. There is your list, and it should be on one to two pages of paper.

This is great for keeping track of who is attending, but unless that information is transferred to a roll or compared to a list later on, it makes it difficult to remember and keep track of those who are not attending.

In some wards I have been in no roll is sent around the room in Gospel Doc class. It was deemed a distraction that is nor worth the effort and not very accurate as whole sections of people get missed when some pass across the isle and some pass forward or behind etc. No SS numbers are sent to SLC on quarterly report anymore......

As I understand it, correct the Sunday School attendance numbers aren't sent to HQ. But without taking attendence in one form or another, how do you track a wards' Sunday School membership activity? Tracking this, I find it to be in line with analyzing trends, strengths, and weaknesses. As well as reporting membership participation, which is important in being as accurate as possible. I know it comes down to what your Bishop desires, but I find these numbers to be super helpful and so does my Bishop.

Also, when I approached the Sunday School President, he was super helpful, and eagerly reports the roll numbers to me. I'm not sure if he takes roll himself, or if he sends around the roll. Someone does it though. If anyone out there has a way they find to be easier than paper/pen tracking, I'll be looking for your post.

I don't see why the bishop or his counselors would care about SS attendance statistics. SS attendance is not mentioned in the temple recommend interview. A large number of active members are teaching other classes, away on assignment, or just chilling in the hallways and foyers. If the SS presidency is concerned about attendance, then he should be patrolling the hallways looking for truant members.

Interesting. My ward does not have the larger amount of active members out teaching, or on other assignments.
I'm still pretty new to the Ward Clerk calling, but to the concern of why the Bishop would be concerned, I would say that according to the Clerk training the clerk should be prepared with information before its asked for. The Bishop may not know there would be an attendence issue, i.e. Hanging in the hallways. If the question comes up if so-and-so is attending S.S., I'd rather be prepared with that information. I believe under the new temple recommend questions (#8) asks if the person "attends your meetings" which I interpret S.S. to be part of that. In my case, I was asked how many members/who leave right after Sacrament Meeting, and what can we do to help those people stay for S.S. That is a legit concern, so the attendence taking commenced. That's how it could be important to my Bishop but not your situation.

Lastly, Doctrine and Covenants 85:1-2 is what I understand as an example of what to make a record of if I dont know what I could be looking at to track. But that's just how I see it, I could be wrong.

drepouille wrote:SS attendance is not mentioned in the temple recommend interview.

True, but I believe it got added by implication with the recent change to the temple recommend interview questions. The old question asked if we attended our sacrament and priesthood meetings. The new question asks if we attend our meetings, without specifying which ones.

The taking of SS attendance is discussed in the Sunday School chapter of Handbook 2, although in practice I do not believe it is often done. As for truant members, I once walked into the foyer during Sunday School and announced that the SS Foyer Class would begin in three minutes. The foyer was empty in two.

I may be a little late to the discussion, but the current attendance role while class-specific in print form is universal where the data is input into the church system. We have struggled as a ward unit to get the attendance information updated from Presidencies outside of the Sunday School.

When the adjustments to the Temple Recommend questions came out, it was explained to us that the reference "meetings" pertained to all meetings that we should be attending.

Re: Why worry about SS attendance, besides it being included in the "meetings" we are asked about in our temple recommend interviews, it lets the Ss predudrncy and the bishopric know any trend i.e. are members skating out after sacrament or hanging out in the halls and flyers. Attendance at sacrament, EQ, RS, and SS are used to help define and develop a units budget.