Grades are closed, but classes continue. Welcome to Philly schools’ last, strange days.

Instruction ended at many Philadelphia schools on Monday, the district’s deadline for teachers to enter the final grades of the 2022-23 school year.

But students are supposed to attend until June 13 — six full school days after grades closed.

Some schools pack these final days with activities: field trips, picnics, dance parties, and awards assemblies, using let-loose fun to keep students engaged and honor their hard work. But in other cases, the week is a wasteland — instructional days on paper, but dead air in reality.

And the down time can have consequences.

» READ MORE: Unexcusable: Philly schools’ chronic absence crisis

At many schools, large swaths of students don’t show up for the final days, pushing some pupils to be “chronically absent,” meaning they have been absent more than 10% of the school year — a marker that can trigger truancy proceedings.

A recent Inquirer analysis of internal district data found that 46% of district students are chronically absent for reasons ranging from safety fears and mental health issues to complications of poverty and the need for older students to help support their families.

Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr. has said getting more students in school more regularly is among his top priorities; “attending school is a life-and-death issue for many children of color in this city,” he said recently.

Attendance varies widely from school to school in this last week, and so does what’s expected of teachers and students.

At Ziegler Elementary, in Oxford Circle, attendance has been strong — at or above 90% nearly every day this week. (Thursday was a blip because of the air-quality issues, with more parents than usual keeping their kids home because of health concerns.)

Principal Nicole Patterson and her team dreamed up a week’s worth of activities, from student vs. staff basketball and dodge ball games to a foam party day where students got to play in an ocean of bubbles and an assembly celebrating 97% of Ziegler students seeing growth on assessments.

“We do a really good job at saving the best for last and making sure they finish strong,” Patterson said. “We do a little bit of instruction, and we frame it as the beginning of next year — get a head start. Plus, it’s a nice time for the staff to truly engage.”

Elementary schools, where parents are more in control of whether children show up to school, typically have stronger attendance, and students often are more likely to buy in to picnics and theme days. But some high schools also are giving it their best shot.

Ruthanne Pilarski, a Strawberry Mansion High math teacher, is keeping students occupied with games focusing on spatial reasoning and other math concepts. The Mansion team has packed the days full of special activities, too: field trips, school beautification projects, a gathering showcasing student talents and shouting out student achievements, even a field day and school cookout moved indoors because of poor air quality.

“We just want to give students more of an incentive to come,” said Pilarski, who said attendance is lower than usual this time of year, but still better than expected. “The kids that are showing up, we want them to know that we held up our end of the bargain. And next year, kids will say, ‘You should come at the end of the year; field day was fun.’”

Teacher Tracy McGuigan-Raub does her best with her South Philadelphia High students, who are English-language learners — teaching them to crochet for stress relief, working on conversational English by playing 50 questions, kicking beach balls in the courtyard and playing cornhole.

McGuigan-Raub talks to her students about staying safe over the summer. She keeps popsicles in her classroom, too — not just because it’s hot on the fifth floor, but because it’s a draw for students, including ones not rostered to her class.

But still, “the last two weeks is mostly me being a seriously over-educated babysitter for about half or less of the rostered students,” McGuigan-Raub said.

At one city elementary school, administrators have given an edict: “Bell-to-bell teaching,” one teacher said. “No fun. It’s hell.”

The teacher, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisal, said she’s given students time to work on uncompleted assignments (even though they won’t get credit for them), had them write about what they learned this year, and leaned heavily on social-emotional learning. Attendance is pretty steady — that is, most of her students eventually show up at least an hour late — but students aren’t getting much, she said.

“Basically, all I’m doing is crowd control,” the elementary teacher said.

One neighborhood high school principal programs as much non-instructional fun as he can as a hook for students to still show up, but he still dreads these last days, when attendance is well below 60%.

“We have nothing to hold kids to,” said the principal, who also required anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record. “When I give kids six days of nonaccountability, of course they’re going to be absent.”

Having grades close so far in advance of the final day of school is a real frustration, the principal said. It makes sense for only seniors, whose credits need to be carefully checked to ensure they’re eligible to graduate.

“Students basically stop coming after the 5th, which means that they will miss six days of school, which makes some habitually truant even though they are no longer expected to demonstrate any kind of learning,” the principal said.

School district officials did not respond to a request for comment on end-of-the-year timing by The Inquirer’s deadline, but confirmed that attendance is lower than usual in the final days of the term. On Thursday afternoon, they also announced that Friday instruction would be virtual because of continued air-quality issues — a situation that likely would not improve attendance.

Andrew Saltz, at Paul Robeson High in West Philadelphia, calls this period “the week of nothingness.”

Robeson is known for strong student engagement, school culture and a cohesive faculty. But Saltz, who teaches English and computer science, is presiding over many games of Uno while he inventories the school’s Chromebooks and completes other end-of-the-year tasks. (The school also hosted a cookout for students, and planned a karaoke party.)

And though Robeson students are usually well-behaved, the end of the year can see behavior slipping, Saltz said — and he understands why.

“Routine is the No. 1 thing. When you have a routine, you don’t have conflict,” he said.

Robeson’s attendance is at about 40%, said Saltz, who’s frustrated by a lack of district-level planning and intention around the end of the year.

“For 175 days, we’re supposed to be data-driven, instruction-oriented people,” said Saltz. “Then they turn it off and say, ‘Grades don’t matter.’ You can’t spend 97% of your time doing the opposite and then expect it to work.”