New Haven Public Schools
Three weeks into New Haven public schools’ new academic year of remote learning, 92 percent of students are reportedly attending at least one class a week. For students with disabilities and English language learners, attendance rate is lower — 85 percent and 87 percent, respectively.
New Haven Public Schools officials discussed these numbers on Wednesday during the Board of Education’s Teaching and Learning Committee.
Superintendent Iline Tracey told the group that she wants to delve deeper into what these numbers indicate about the experience of English learners during the pandemic.
“I’m still concerned about the English learners,” Tracey said. “I don’t think it’s lack of access to devices. It may be something else.”
The New Haven Board of Education voted last week to reopen school buildings for up to 125 students with severe cognitive disabilities. At the same meeting, they decided not to green light a similar small-scale reopening for refugee English learners, for lack of specific information.
Tracey has assigned her director of English learner programs, Pedro Mendia-Landa, to figure out whether some schools are missing more students than others and to learn what is going wrong. She said that teachers, paraprofessionals, principals and truancy workers are calling families and knocking on doors to fill out the attendance picture.
“Sometimes life happens in some of these families. We try to trace down whether there’s anything we can do,” Tracey said.
Chronic absenteeism is disproportionately high in general for students with disabilities. Roughly one in four students with disabilities misses 10 percent or more of the school year every year, according to the state’s data portal EdSight.
Overall Attendance Up
Around 92 percent of students attended at least one class this week.
In the first few days of school, roughly a quarter of students were MIA. Now, the number of absent students is 1,556, or around 7 percent.
Teachers are working to make sure that students are not just showing up to virtual class but participating as well.
Zoom
Coop Spanish Teacher Odalis Mercado.
Spanish teacher Odalis Mercado does not force her Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School students to turn on their videos. Instead, she asks them to either unmute themselves to answer group questions or type answers in the chat.
“Remind them to type it in the chat. And they’ll do it,” Mercado said.
She said that small group activities, which students requested more of, have worked well for her virtual classes.
“I notice they turn their cameras on. They don’t mind, because it’s two or three of them in a group,” Mercado said.
Soo-prize, soo-prize.