In Mount Pleasant, it’s not unusual for first-grade teacher Danielle Bruursema to have a quarter of her 24 students absent on the same day, an alarmingly higher rate than just a few years ago. In Ypsilanti last year, plummeting attendance in now-retired Debbie Swanson’s fifth grade class made it difficult to build course lessons. Maybe 50% of students bothered to show up for scheduled half days. And in Holt, third-grade teacher Michael Adams draws a straight line between rising absenteeism and