Keeping Kids in Class: How Hampton Roads school districts are addressing attendance
PORTSMOUTH, Va. (WAVY) — Showing up to school is especially important for students, not just for academic purposes, but also to make sure everything is going well in the home, but many Hampton Roads school districts say their attendance numbers have fluctuated over the past couple years following the pandemic.
Federal data shows during the 2020-2021 school year more than 14.7 million students nationwide were chronically absent. According to the non-profit Attendance Works, this nearly doubled from the nearly 8 million students who missed at least 10% of school days prior to the pandemic.
In Virginia, 20% of students statewide were chronically absent in the 2021–22 school year, according to a study by JLARC.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin established a chronic absenteeism task force in 2023 as part of his “ALL IN VA” Plan following the pandemic. At the time, chronic absenteeism rates continued to climb.
The Virginia Department of Education launched an Attendance Matters Program, using #AttendanceMatters, to encourage kids to come to school. The task force was formed to address growing problems with attendance in the Commonwealth and to help find ways to address it while getting kids back in the classroom.
Many districts saw their absenteeism rates spike following the pandemic. School leaders say they got different reasons, like ‘my child learns better from home,’ or ‘they didn’t feel like coming to school today,’ but other reasons were more concerning.
“Watching them go through those struggles and then achieve that goal at times, there’s no better feeling,” said Portsmouth Public Schools Attendance Liaison Derek Montgomery.
From raising their hand at the front of the class, to walking across the stage at graduation, there are a lot of important life moments that stem from showing up to school.
“You’d like to think school is fun for everybody, but everybody’s situation is different,” said Montgomery.
Montgomery said when a teacher lets them know a student has been absent for a few days, that’s when they get involved.
“We’ll follow up, whether it’s with a parent phone contact or if we need to go door-to-door,” said Montgomery.
As a last resort, the district may have to file truancy charges on parents. Portsmouth Coordinator of Student Services Dr. Angela Flowers said that’s what they want to avoid.
“If we can get them in school, that’s our part,” said Dr. Flowers. “That’s what we do to save a life and get those students educated and graduated.”
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But Dr. Flowers said over the past couple of years, they realized some students had bigger reasons for not showing up to school, reasons they could help address.
“Different situations go on and we have to treat every home, every child like they’re our own,” said Dr. Flowers.
So they came up with an approach to address the students’ needs, adding a chance and truancy team with leaders from the community and Parent and Family Engagement Liaisons at each school.
Simonsdale Elementary Liaison, Susan Hoover, said when calling the parents, it’s not about casting blame, but instead removing barriers for families.
“We have the ability to help families with food, with clothing, and sometimes those are simply the problem,” said Hoover.
Portsmouth also utilizes a program, called Care Solace, to help connect families with mental health services.
“We have families in crisis across the cities,” said Montgomery. “We have homelessness, we have mental health issues.”
They’ve also added incentives, like one called NBA, which stands for Not Being Absent.
“We want kids who maybe have struggles to say ‘let me go to school mom; I need to work on the NBA,'” said Hoover.
Portsmouth’s chronic absenteeism rate spiked to 28.6% in 2020, then 32.8% in 2021. Right now, they’re hovering around 23%.
These plans of action to tackle chronic absenteeism are part of Governor Glenn Youngkin’s “All in VA” initiative.
The “ALL IN VA” plan is a three-pronged approach to accelerate the learning loss recovery by addressing: Attendance, Literacy and Learning.
Click here to read Gov. Youngkin’s ALL IN VA plan
Every district in the Commonwealth got money to fund their mission, most using the new budget to add staff exclusively focused on tackling this problem.
“They’re calling these parents not to get reasons why kids are missing, but just to keep them informed,” said Suffolk Chief of Administrative Services Dr. Rodney Brown. “It is important for kids to come to school, so we try to hit them early.”
Dr. Brown said they have a three-tier level, with the first being education for parents, the second offering resources.
“If there’s a medical problem if they’re having problems at home, you know, all of these things that cause kids not to come – like daycare,” said Dr. Brown. “Many of our kids may have to stay home to care for their siblings and we have programs for that, so we make sure that we can connect those families to that.”
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In addition to keeping tabs on students, Suffolk Superintendent John Gordon said it’s important for staff to be there as well.
“It’s a direct correlation,” said Superintendent Gordon. “The more kids are in school, the better they will do. The more staff is in school, the better the kids will perform. I mean, it’s a direct correlation on both ends.”
The incentives in Suffolk as part of the “ALL IN VA” Plan are for both too. Schools can get an extra $500 each month for having the highest attendance rate.
“We talk about it so much, then what happens is a lot of friends, a lot of the classmates ends up asking the questions, you know, they end up doing some of the work for us,” said Superintendent Gordon. “I need you to be at school; we want to win that $500.”
Superintendent Gordon said schools are judged by a 95% attendance rate, so if schools dip below that, they become concerned.
“Right now we have about three or four schools that we begin to get a little concerned about if their attendance rates are actually lower than 93%, 94% and 95%,” said Superintendent Gordon. “We are just hoping that chronic absenteeism is something that people understand that the schools are here to support.”
Both districts said in addition to marking students present, school leaders want to make sure they’re safe.
“Students can be at home and they can be in danger and we definitely don’t want that to be an issue, so we are taking care of the whole child,” said Dr. Flowers.
School leaders say they want to do everything they can to keep kids in the classroom and learning every day.
“We can’t solve every problem, but we can certainly make an attempt to make things better,” said Montgomery.
“It’s going to start with the parent responsibility piece and with that, what is the school able to provide, resource wise, to help those parents out?” said Superintendent Gordon.
Superintendent Gordon said it’s also important to be vigilant about when students are being picked up from school, if they are being picked up early. He said if a student is picked up halfway through math class several times throughout the month, it can directly reflect on their math scores.
“Our school administrators can actually trace it back to, well, the last nine weeks, you actually picked up little Johnny seven times during that time frame,” said Superintendent Gordon. “So it’s not just making sure that you are actually at school every day, it’s also making sure that you’re in school every day on time and that you’re staying for the full instructional day.”
Portsmouth Public Schools also utilizes a program as part of their funding, called Everyday Labs to help track attendance.
Virginia Beach Public Schools used part of their funding to utilize this program as well. They said they are using the program to increase communications with families. This looks different depending on the student’s attendance. Some families will receive a letter every six to eight weeks, while others will receive bi-weekly text messages about attendance. The program also provides families with access to a “family support team” whose members speak more than 10 languages.
From the school’s end, staff can access an online dashboard dedicated to attendance. The dashboard provides analytics, intervention, tracking and more.
Virginia Beach City Public Schools also added five attendance ambassadors and one attendance ambassador coordinator. The ambassadors are retired teachers and coaches who serve as mentors, connecting students and their families to schools and community support.
The ambassadors are paired with up to eight students who have been absent more than 10% of their days enrolled.
“They meet with students during the school day, speak with families before or after school, and may work with families on weekends to foster stronger relationships and ensure assigned students have whatever is needed for students to attend school regularly and experience success,” Robert B. Jamison, the Executive Director of the Office of Student Support Services told 10 On Your Side.
Williamsburg-James City County Public Schools have already seen success with their programs. At the end of the 3rd marking period last school year 18.7% of students were considered chronically absent. That same time frame this school year, only 15.1% of students were considered chronically absent.
Those changes were similar to other school systems: designated staff reaching out to families. They also brought on an Attendance Specialist who assists with monitoring attendance data and supports interventions.
To read your school district’s “ALL IN VA” Spending Plan, click here.
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