This article originally appeared in Stateline.
When outreach worker Leah Marks shows up at homes in Sanford, Maine—a small manufacturing town 20 miles inland and a world away from Tony Kennebunkport—the kids know it’s time to walk her to the school bus.
Her walks often involve snow and ice at this time of year. But what they really mean is connection.
Marks, outreach coordinator for the Sanford schools, said a boy she walked with in the morning went from missing 45 days last school year to missing just one so far this school year. Marks said his single mother is raising him and two siblings, one with a disability, and the family struggled to get him to the bus on time.
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But with the walking aid, he chats with his friends and looks forward to greeting the vice-principal at school. “Chris is so proud of his progress, and so is his mother,” Marks said of the child.
She said it is reassuring for parents when their children walk to school. It means “being able to tell a parent taking their child to school that ‘we’ve got them’ and we’ll make sure they get breakfast.”
Experts say the lack of connection between students and school is one of the biggest factors leading to high absenteeism across the country. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, regular school attendance has fallen sharply.
One-on-one connection is the key to bringing the kids back, education workers say, but it’s painstaking and requires money and dedication. Some states, including Maine, are spending more money or implementing programs to address absenteeism.
Nearly 30% of public school students nationally were chronically absent in the 2021-2022 school year, compared to about 16% in 2017-2018 before the pandemic, according to Attendance Works, a nonprofit organization tackling chronic absenteeism, and the Everyone Graduates Center of Johns Hopkins University School of Education. Chronic absenteeism means that a student misses a tenth or more of the school year for whatever reason.
Research has shown that student absences can hurt test scores and lead to higher dropout rates.
In Maine, the number of students considered chronically absent fell slightly last school year, from 31% in 2021-2022 to 27% in 2022-2023, according to the Maine Department of Education. Ministry spokesman Marcus Mrowka said that while government officials are “encouraged” by the decline, the numbers are still too high.
He noted that the COVID-19 pandemic has led parents to keep their children home at “the first sign” of illness, and cited other factors including “increased stress, mental health and other well-being issues” that make students feel less engaged in school.
Maine is using $10 million in emergency federal funds to implement eligibility programs, Mrowka said.
To increase attendance, schools must be safe and academically engaging, and students must feel like they belong and that adults care about their well-being, Attendance Works said.
“Relationships are absolutely essential to every part of this,” said Hedy Chang, founder and executive director of Attendance Works.
“The pandemic has eroded these conditions for a large number of students. When we closed the schools… we said it wasn’t healthy to be in school. Now we say: ‘You can go back to school, it’s healthy.’
In addition to families facing financial or social challenges, Chang said that sometimes even affluent parents don’t see the need for school attendance because the pandemic and remote learning seemed to show them that “you can always make up for the work.”
“When there is a lot of turnover in the classroom, it affects the ability of teachers to teach and other children to learn,” she said. “I think we need to think about the consequences of our actions. Sometimes your family needs time together and something very challenging is going on; there are times when it is really discretionary and we have to think twice.
According to Attendance Works and the Everyone Graduates Center, Connecticut had a chronic absenteeism rate of nearly 22% in 2022, up from 9% in 2017. The state launched the home-visiting Learner Engagement and Attendance Program, known as LEAP, in 2021, which grew out of the office of the governor and serves students who feel disconnected from school.
Initially, the program was not intended to focus primarily on absenteeism, but as absenteeism escalated, the program changed, said Mike Meyer, director of family and community engagement at Stamford Public Schools.
Sometimes, Meyer says, the program pays teachers extra to make home visits to students and their families after school or on weekends. But the program has started hiring outreach workers to intervene with families who are “really struggling and struggling to get their kids to school.”
Schools in Stamford are working with the Stamford Youth Services Bureau, a city agency, to address absenteeism. Lily Villanueva, a family counselor contracted by the school district from the nonprofit Domus Kids, created a study group for high school students who were chronically absent. Since then, the students in the group have had their poor grades turned into passing grades and two are going to college, she said.
One student, the son of a Haitian immigrant, was also involved in an after-school video game program at his school. “They were looking forward to going to school that day so they could go to their after-school program,” she said.
“I’m trying to build a relationship with the family,” Villanueva, 26, said in an interview. “It’s all about trust and getting the families to open up to you. We have even gone so far as to pick up students from their homes and transport them directly. We do that so we can help them build their routine.”
Kari Sullivan-Custer, director of the Connecticut LEAP program, which initially used $10.7 million in federal pandemic funds for the 2021 absenteeism program, said the program is targeting 15 school districts. In 2023, the state legislature appropriated $7 million in federal funds to carry out the program through 2026.
She said the program targets districts with free lunch programs, or multilingual students. “They often had high chronic absenteeism,” she says.
The District of Columbia found that career-oriented programs help high school students learn skills they enjoy, which keeps them coming back to school, said Clifton Martin, state director of career and technical education for D.C. schools. The program, which launched last year, includes cybersecurity/IT training and general nursing.
“We found that those students are more engaged; they are more excited to be in this environment, surrounded by other young people with similar interests.” He said the students who participate in the career programs “have an approximately 5 to 7% increase in attendance compared to those who do not participate.” Absenteeism, he says, is ‘moving in the right direction’, partly thanks to the career programmes.
Attendance figures for DC show that the chronic absenteeism rate was approximately 44% in 2022, compared to almost 27% in 2017.
Some school districts hire private companies to address chronic absenteeism. In Maryland, several districts have hired Concentric Educational Solutions, a Baltimore-based tutoring and outreach company, to help with student engagement, said David Heiber, the company’s founder and CEO. The company now operates in 12 states, he said.
Heiber said he can identify with the problems his company is trying to address. “I started Concentric because I was one of those students,” he said in an interview. “I was kicked out of five high schools, my parents died and I went to prison.”
But he went back to school, became a teacher, got a doctorate. and subsequently became an administrator before founding the company.
Heiber said knocking is an effective way to connect with students and families, but many districts don’t have the staff to do so. He says his company can do that, at a cost of about $70 per visit and a grand total of about $175 to $350 per student for multiple visits, depending on the number of visits.
The company, he said, is addressing “what I’ve experienced and what I’ve seen.” Before he was expelled, he was an all-state athlete in cross country, he said. But even that wasn’t enough to keep him engaged.
“If I was an all-state athlete and managed to fade, imagine what happens to students who do [don’t have] that,” said Heiber.
Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. If you have any questions, please contact editor Scott S. Greenberger: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Tweet.
