AWOL Students

We are experiencing mass amounts of students leaving campus each day, and/or are skipping classes.  Many of these classes are their Guided Study class which is in combination with their lunch period.  First, we are struggling to get students to attend GS because they see no value and often say that class is pointless.  To an extent, I see their point.  They explain they don't receive a grade so why should they have to go.  We have students walk out the doors, go to lunch, and try to come back on campus.  They leave for periods at a time.  We are the largest school in the state of Georgia.  We have 35 trailers and too many places for students to exit the building.  Many of our students leave out the side door where are trailers are located and keep walking.  Some leave out the back doors and walk around to the front of the school.  On a daily basis we are catching up to 10 students at a minimum walking back on campus to catch the bus.  The majority of these students are not engaged in school and we are working to fix that next year when it comes to instruction.  However, we can't teach the relationship piece.  If students have a teacher that engages them and that they have a good relationship with, they attend that class.  It has been the fault of the administration team to not keep track of these students since the beginning of the year.  Because we are so large and have so many different issues, the students who are AWOL has fallen to the side.  Attendance is a huge issues at our school and next year we are looking to make this top priority.