Attendance Clinics Target Absences Early

The student absence rate at Quinnipiac School has dropped from 37 to 15 percent over the last year — in part because of a partnership with a probate judge on a new clinic.

The school’s principal, Grace Nathman, joined city officials at Quinnipiac on Lexington Avenue Monday to to tout the results of the ​“Attendance and Engagement Clinic,” a collaboration between the district and the Regional Children’s Probate Court to improve school attendance. Strong School has the district’s only attendance clinic.

The clinic is part of the district’s ​“Attendance Matters” campaign launched in September to target students’ chronic absence.

“Students must attend and stay in school for education to meaningfully impact the children and young adults who will one day inherit the city,” Mayor Toni Harp said Monday. ​“We will continue to fight to guarantee that all our students have access to an education, free of obstacles and social barriers.”

Through the clinic, now in its fourth year, school officials and community partners target individual problems keeping kids from coming to school, flagging them for chronic absenteeism in early grades and then offering support to their families. Social workers and school staff meet with students and offer a series of workshops and meetings to help them work through any problems at home preventing them from coming to school regularly.

Nathman said she had a student with chronic asthma who was regularly missing school. Staffers discovered that they could keep him in class by keeping his nebulizer and back-up inhaler in the school.

“Since the student’s mom brought the machine here, he was never absent again,” Nathman said.

Part of the clinic’s success lies in its partnerships with the Department of Children and Families and mental health clinic Clifford Beers, Nathman (pictured at top left) said, which reassures parents instead of making them feel judged. Probate Court and the United Way fund the clinic.

“Often times the parents come in with a negative attitude and a bit of a chip on their shoulders, but then they realize that we’re not there to chastise them or to speak down to them with regard to their parenting skills,” she said. ​“We’re there as an outreach to offer them any support we can to ensure that their children get to school every day.”

Probate Court Judge John Keyes funded 12 students to participate in an afterschool program, as an incentive to help students feel a stronger connection to the school — ultimately improving their attendance, Nathman said.

Gemma Joseph Lumpkin, the district’s chief of youth, family and community engagement, said the fact that the probate judge is ​“investing his time and resources” in the attendance clinic is a ​“perfect example of the community making this an imperative.”

Officials started the clinic in those two ​“small, high-needs schools,” with the intention of looking at annual data and expanding over time to others in the district, she said.