Attendance Update: More Students Showing Up

How does an elementary school more than halve its chronic absenteeism rate, down to 25 percent, in a year?

John C. Daniels School leaders had one answer for City Hall public-education watchdogs: supplement district-wide support services with a series of homeroom attendance contests that get kids to cheer on one another for showing up to class.

John C. Daniels Principal Yesenia Perez and Assistant Principal Robert Manghnani appeared at the Board of Alders Education Committee meeting at City Hall on Wednesday evening to share their strategy for building school spirit and encouraging attendance this spring. They did so as school district leaders touted the success of chronic absenteeism interventions in the New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) over the past several months.

The Education Committee hearing took place roughly four months after the state’s top education official and New Haven state lawmakers convened an online meeting with city public school district leaders about how to curb the city’s high chronic absenteeism rate. It also follows two previous Education Committee meetings — one in December, one in February – dedicated to uncovering the root causes of kids not going to school, and trying to find a way, or many ways, to improve attendance.

These months later, according to data presented Wednesday night, NHPS student attendance is on the rise.

Across the district, 36.9 percent of students are currently considered ​“chronically absent” — meaning that they have missed 10 percent of the school days for which they have been enrolled students. That number is down from 45.8 percent in December 2022, which in turn marked a decline from 60.2 percent last June.

At John C. Daniels, one quarter of students are classified as chronically absent, compared to 54 percent last school year, according to Perez.

After NHPS Chief of Youth, Family and Community Engagement Gemma Joseph-Lumpkin met with school principals to warn of an anticipated ​“spring slump” in attendance from March through June — a product of warmer weather and school-weary students eager for summer break — Perez and Manghnani got to brainstorming. They decided to create a school-wide ​“March Madness” contest between homerooms at John C. Daniels, organizing brackets and offering rewards to the classes who reached the highest attendance rates.

Each day at 2:30 p.m., the school would announce that day’s attendance winners. Teachers started sending out photos of the brackets to absent students, encouraging them to come to class in the middle of the school day to boost their homeroom’s attendance. 

When one eighth grade classroom showed far more enthusiasm for the contest than the other, the school leaders decided to combine those two homerooms’ statistics for the purposes of the competition. They saw students from one classroom urging their peers to show up, and the attendance rates across both classrooms climbed.

At the end of March, the classrooms with the top three attendance rates received pizza, ice cream, and cookie parties. The school decided to keep the contest going, with a springtime bunny theme of ​“hop to the top” for the month of April. So far, ​“Our first graders are crushing it,” said Manghnani.

Since March 13, Perez said, only two students at Daniels have missed 10 percent of the school days in that time period.

Outside of City Hall’s second-floor Aldermanic Chamber Wednesday, Perez spoke to a change in school culture that the contest has sparked. She recalled that one child started coming in to school more often because of the contest — ​“and his peers were like, ​‘We’re so glad you’re here!’ ” The contest isn’t just rewarding students for coming to school, she said — it’s ​“building that sense of belonging” and encouraging students to help one another reduce absenteeism rates.

Other schools have used games and spirit-building activities to encourage attendance, according to administrators. Wilbur Cross High School, for instance, has been handing out raffle tickets and offering gift cards at random to students who show up to school.

Joseph-Lumpkin, NHPS Assistant Superintendent Viviana Conner, and Dropout Prevention Coordinator Charles Blango attributed much of the school system’s progress on Wednesday to the door-to-door parent and student engagement efforts, which have ramped up in the last several months.

The school system’s Dropout Prevention Specialist team increased to 20 full-time people in January, and NHPS ramped up partnerships with the teachers’ union and 14 community organizations, including Abundant Harvest and Urban Community Alliance. Those groups are collaboratively knocking on families’ doors, visiting homes, and offering support services to families whose kids are either already chronically absent or at risk of becoming chronically absent. (Read more about those efforts here and here.)

When Hill Alder Kampton Singh asked for an example of a phone call an administrator might make to a parent, Blango explained that the dropout prevention staff and partners are trained to lead with students’ strengths rather than starting off with accusations. 

“We don’t ask why they’re absent first,” Blango said. ​“We say, ​‘How are you?’ ” and praise something that a student has done well — a class they’re excelling in, an after-school activity they have a passion for. Then, they ask about potential challenges the kid may be facing at home: ​“Is there anything we can do?”

This approach is intended to foster positive cooperative relationships between parents and schools, rather than taking a punitive or judgmental approach that might put both parents and students on the defensive.

Other strategies that NHPS has employed to boost attendance include increasing after-school and Saturday programming to encourage kids who are more motivated by non-academic activities; hosting back-to-school canvasses and rallies over the summer; encouraging big celebrations and school-wide traditions; emphasizing the importance of pronouncing kids’ names correctly and greeting them warmly as they walk through school doors; and giving more attention to advisory and homeroom meetings, where kids have an opportunity to check in about their lives and hear important announcements.

“We feel good about the progress that we’re making,” said Joseph-Lumpkin. ​“We recognize the intensive work that needs to happen.”

Connecticut State Department of Education spokesperson Eric Scoville said that New Haven’s March attendance rate is ​“more comparable to that of its peers.” He wrote that the state’s Learner Engagement and Attendance Program, an intervention centered on home visits, has helped forge ​“positive, relationship building connections with families to help access supports and remove barriers to attendance.” He also praised the school system for utilizing training programs with the national organization Attendance Works. ​“Our hope is that this intensive effort continues as attendance is foundational to student success.”

While the school system as a whole has seen a 36.9 percent chronic absenteeism rate, some groups of students remain more vulnerable to absenteeism. Still, students across the district have improved their attendance. Student absences can be related to a wide array of causes, including housing insecurity, trauma, a lack of confidence or excitement about school, fears about bullying and conflict, chronic disabilities, and short-term illnesses like colds, the flu, and Covid-19. 

The district’s 649 identified students experiencing homelessness have seen a chronic absenteeism absenteeism rate shrink from 78.6 percent in June 2022 to 54.5 percent in March 2023.

Students receiving free lunch have seen chronic absenteeism rates fall to 43.4 percent in March, compared to 26.7 percent among students receiving reduced lunch and 23.8 percent among students not eligible for free meals.

Black and Latino students had higher rates of chronic absenteeism, with 40.4 percent of Black students and 38.5 percent of Latino students classified as chronically absent, compared to 25.3 percent of white students and 26.5 percent of students with any other racial identity.

Kindergarteners and ninth through twelfth graders continued to fall behind other grades in March, with absenteeism rates of a little over 40 percent. The grade most likely to miss at least 10 percent of school was ninth grade, in which 46 percent of students were chronically absent as of March.

Claudia Herrera asked about the school system’s strategy to promote kindergarten attendance.

Dropout Prevention Specialist Dania Torres explained that teachers hand out packets underscoring the importance of attendance to every kindergarten family at the beginning of the year. They inform parents about school clinics and other resources available at schools. 

Teachers are fighting against a notion that in Kindergarten, ​“they don’t have to attend school,” Blango said.

Assistant Superintendent Conner noted that the state’s requirement that families submit documentation of routine childhood vaccinations before students can be admitted to school delayed some kindergartners from attending school at the start of the year. She said NHPS is working with the health department on a ​“campaign” related to child vaccinations.

“I’m excited about this meeting,” said Annex Alder and retired NHPS principal Sal Punzo. ​“It’s nice to see that funds are spent and you see results. I’m very proud of what you accomplished.”