Absenteeism Update: ​“Encouraging,” So Far

Hopes are high among chronic absenteeism-combatting public school district leaders, as average daily attendance rates show that 85 to 90 percent of students showed up during the first two weeks of the school year.

That report was given at the most recent Board of Education meeting by New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) Office of Youth, Family & Community Chief Gemma Joseph Lumpkin, who has been leading the district’s efforts to address chronic absenteeism as the number of students missing school spiked during and after the Covid pandemic.

The Tuesday evening meeting was held in-person at Barack Obama School on Farnham Avenue and online via Zoom and YouTube. Board members Matt Wilcox, Mayor Justin Elicker, and Darnell Goldson joined the biweekly meeting in-person, while Abie Benitez, Yesenia Rivera, and Edward Joyner Zoomed in. Board member OrLando Yarborough was not present. 

A student is deemed chronically absent when they miss 10 percent or more of school days.

For the full 2021 – 2022 academic year, the district had a 58.2 chronic absenteeism rate, which local and state education leaders deemed a crisis.

That number dropped to 36.6 percent by the end of the 2022 – 2023 school year.

For the current 2023 – 2024 school year, Joseph Lumpkin said on Tuesday that the district’s chronic absenteeism target is for a decline to 27.5 percent.

Data pulled on Sept. 19, which was the 12th day of the current school year, showed that the district had 25.2 percent of students (4,828 students) considered chronically absent. Joseph Lumpkin said those are ​“encouraging” numbers. That’s compared to a 44 percent chronic absenteeism rate by the end of September last year.

This year’s numbers were not reflective of students missing ten percent of the 182 days this full school year, but rather ten percent of the school days between Aug 31 and Sept 19. That data also showed that 3,698 students are approaching the chronic absenteeism threshold of ten percent, meaning they have just missed one day of school so far. 

Click here to view the full presentation. 

The data by grade level shows that ninth graders and kindergarteners have the highest rates of being chronically absent thus far this year.

“They have traditionally been our challenged grades and that is an issue across the country,” she said. 

Knowing this Joseph Lumpkin said her team is working hard to connect with those kindergarten families whom students are dependent on for getting to school. She said many of the absenteeism cases are due to parental issues and her team continues to work to explain to families ​“the importance of kindergarten” while also providing them with needed basic resources.

The district’s average daily attendance rates, meanwhile, have been between 85 and 90 percent as it approaches the first month into the school year. On Sept 26, the districts average was at 91.2 percent. 

The daily number reflects a drop in attendance (88.5 percent) on Sept. 7, which was when the district issued a two-day early dismissal for schools due to a heat wave’s impact on several buildings’ HVAC systems.

Also during Tuesday’s presentation, NHPS Supt. Madeline Negrón provided context for the district’s demographics in comparison with last year’s state of Department of Education numbers. 

This year’s numbers so far show that 65.5 percent of NHPS students’ family incomes qualify them for free/reduced lunch, 17.1 percent of students have disabilities, 22.1 percent of students are multilingual learners (NHPS serves students who speak a total of 71 languages), and 3.7 percent are experiencing homelessness. Additionally, 76.2 percent of NHPS students are high-need learners, meaning they fall into more than one of the previously mentioned categories. 

“I want to make sure that everybody understands the reality of this urban district, which right now is the second largest in our state,” Negrón said. 

This summer Joseph Lumpkin was charged with the proactive work, alongside her team, of doing more than 1,000 home visits to check in on extreme chronic absenteeism cases amongst families. This year the team began their work in July to engage with students and their families and check in on how they could offer resources and support to them for life hurdles like food insecurity, illness, and homelessness. 

This work has continued into the start of the school year as district leaders look forward to drawing comparisons to the attendance number from the first 45-day mark of last year to this school year.

Joseph Lumpkin added that her team has met with the district’s 42 school nurses to help with outreach to families as colder weather approaches and increased Covid and flu numbers are expected to impact families. 

During the presentation, Joseph Lumpkin informed the board and community that her department’s parent engagement team is also gathering the information from families to understand the reasons for students absences. This is to help both with providing context and putting together support efforts to assist families struggling with particular obstacles. 

According to the data the district has collected so far from families who provided reasons for their students’ absences, 39 percent of families said absences were due to a student or family illness; 13 percent of families reported lacking the updated student vaccinations needed to attend school; 9 percent said they did not get their students’ physical doctor exams complete. In these cases, Joseph Lumpkin’s team aims to connect those families with a school nurse and the city’s Health Department which can refer them to a clinic or help them to arrange an appointment for a sickness, vaccination, or physical to get students back to school as soon as possible. 

Joseph Lumpkin added that illness is one of the main reasons across the country for student chronic absenteeism. 

Since the start of this year the district has established a strategy to reduce its rates by calling for school staff to make phone calls to families once students miss two or more days of school. This alert allows for the schools to check in with families before absences become more extreme. 

The district considers students who have missed more than six days of school so far as moderate level and has its partners at the Learner Engagement Attendance Program (LEAP) make home visits. The students are also assigned a ​“success mentor” to implement a success plan for the future. 

At the conclusion of Joseph Lumpkin’s presentation Tuesday night, Board of Education Secretary Edward Joyner requested to hear more in the future about what incentives schools offer to students with good or improving attendance. He also asked, ​“What are the sanctions when we have children who have no authority to come to school on their own when their parents are not sending them to school?” 

Similarly, Board member Darnell Goldson asked, ​“What do we do when everything we’re doing doesn’t work?”

Joseph Lumpkin said the district does not have ​“legal sanctions against families” but can make and has made referrals to the state Department of Children and Families (DCF).

When asked if those particular situations have had successful results when DCF has been involved, Joseph Lumpkin said some student attendance has improved.

When asked how students who are chronically absent are moving on to the next grade, Joseph Lumpkin said in some cases student absences do not affect their grades. ​“Eighteen days out of 180 days might not mean the student is not doing well in class. It may mean we need to give them additional help in some cases,” she added. ​“They are at risk because the research tells us that that many days puts them at risk but that’s the first group that we go after.”

Mayor Justin Elicker requested that in the future the district provides how many students and families are chronically absent as a result of mental health concerns. 

Board vice president Matt Wilcox also requested information on how much outreach goes without responses from families. Wilcox cautioned that ​“the one danger when we concentrate on one metric like what’s the daily attendee rate, that’s gonna put a lot of pressure on building staff to fudge the numbers, maybe pressure on some teachers, other staff and principals.”