School officials: More than 30% of students ‘chronically absent’

NEW HAVEN — More than 30 percent of public school students in the city had missed at least 10 percent of instructional time as of March 1 this school year, according to information released by school district leaders.

The data, released publicly ahead of a Monday night meeting of the Board of Education, shows students in kindergarten, first grade, ninth grade and 10th grade especially are missing more than one day of school every two weeks.

Missing 10 percent of instructional time classifies a student as being “chronically absent.” According to the U.S. Department of Education, chronically absent students are four times more likely not to read at grade level by third grade and are seven times more likely to drop out of school before graduation.

District leaders have hypothesized that an increase in absenteeism

during the pandemic is connected with a dramatic increase in failing grades in the first two marking periods. According to district data, the number of students with more than five failing grades on their report cards in the second marking period increased to 657, from 160 the year prior. In middle school, the rate of students receiving five or more Fs was almost 10 times larger, from 25 in 2019 to 214 in 2020.

“There seems to be a correlation between the absenteeism and the grades that were not that good for the first two marking periods,” said Superintendent of Schools Iline Tracey.

According to Michele Sherban, the school district’s data supervisor, 90 percent of the students failing five or more courses this year are chronically absent. Of high school students failing five or more classes, they attend school 47 percent of the time on average; in middle school, students failing five or more classes attend school 68 percent of the time.

According to the absentee data, 32.2 percent of New Haven Public Schools students were chronically absent as of March 1 — a number that includes 34.5 percent of kindergarten students and 41.9 percent of ninth-grade students. Last year, the district reported to the state that its overall rate of chronic absenteeism was 21.1 percent; in 2018-19, the last full school year before school buildings closed and instruction abruptly was shifted online, the overall rate of chronic absenteeism was 19.3 percent.

The total enrollment of city schools is about 20,000, but the data presented from the district counts the 18,736 students who are not enrolled in pre-kindergarten.

Last year, the district reported its rate of chronic absenteeism in kindergarten was 26 percent, and in ninth grade the rate was 31.7 percent.

At four schools — Augusta Lewis Troup School, Brennan Rogers School, James Hillhouse High School and Lincoln-Bassett School — more than half of students were chronically absent at the start of the month. Wexler-Grant School, with 49.6 percent of its students chronically absent, is on the borderline of having more than half of its students missing 10 percent or more of school days. At the district’s alternative high school, more than nine in 10 students were chronically absent, the data shows.

Across the district’s 40 schools where attendance is reported, there are 14 schoollevel grades where the chronic absence percentage is in the single digits — eight of those 14 are at Worthington Hooker School in the East Rock neighborhood, where every grade in the K-8 school except for the fourth grade has fewer than 10 percent of its students chronically absent.

From kindergarten through 12th grade districtwide, the fifth grade has the lowest percentage of its students chronically absent — with a 26.7 percent rate of chronic absenteeism, more than one in four fifth-grade students still is chronically absent in the district.

To address the issue of attendance, Youth, Family and Community Engagement Chief Gemma Joseph Lumpkin said the district has adapted a four-pronged response proposed by the national nonprofit Attendance Works.

She said that, in response to the pandemic, her team has increased its referrals to community mental health services to ensure students and families are healthy.

Board member Tamiko Jackson-McArthur said district officials already expected poor outcomes from remote learning.

“We know we were going to have these numbers we didn’t like. Virtual is not the best, but it was all we had,” she said.

However, Jackson-McArthur said she has been pleased with the district’s emphasis on students’ social and emotional health as a means of keeping them engaged and healthy.

“There’s some serious trauma around this pandemic we’re going to have to address,” she said.

Tracey said the entire city and school district must respond to the district’s academics and attendance issues.

“If one child struggles, we all struggle. If one child fails a subject, it’s a failure on all our parts,” she said.