DOE 'hides' absent students
UFT: It’s 180K kids
As many as 180,000 kids may not have set foot in a classroom this year, the head of the city’s teachers union said on Wednesday.
Speaking at a City Council hearing, United Federation of Teachers president Michael Mulgrew said the Department of Education is “hiding” the number of students showing up to school to avoid political embarrassment.
“They have an attendance figure for every day,” Mulgrew said, adding that 180,000 was his estimate for the number absent. “They know how many kids didn’t show up . . . They are hiding this.”
Three weeks into the school year, the DOE has yet to release enrollment data or the number of absentee kids.
The agency contends that the figures are in flux and won’t be finalized until Oct. 31.
Mulgrew contended that the DOE is leaning on that date because it’s the deadline to provide enrollment numbers to the state.
Councilman Mark Treyger (D-Brooklyn), who as chair of the Education Committee has introduced legislation to force the DOE’s hand, blistered the agency for a lack of transparency Wednesday.
“It is unfathomable to me — and insulting to this committee and to the public — that they will not share the attendance data and information,” he said.
Treyger repeatedly pressed DOE First Deputy Chancellor Donald Conyers for some statistical clarity.
“Respectfully, how many students do we have currently enrolled in our public-school system?” he asked.
“And I will respectfully say to you that I don’t have that number to give you at this moment, chair,” Conyers responded during the Zoom gathering.
Treyger fumed, “This should be basic. This should not be controversial. The fact that we don’t share how many kids are enrolled in our school system right now is unacceptable to me. And, quite frankly, further erodes trust with the public.”
In the absence of hard city data, enrollment conjecture ranges from 850,000 to just under 1 million.
Treyger said he has heard anecdotally that up to 150,000 kids remain out of their schools.
He asked DOE Deputy Chancellor LaShawn Robinson for specific attendance numbers rather than percentages.
“I do not have a number for the record,” Robinson said. “I can certainly get you more information there. But I have seen, unofficially, that that number is far from accurate.”
She said the DOE is seeing an “uptick” in attendance as the year progresses.
Both Mulgrew and Treyger suggested that a considerable number of absences are due to ongoing health concerns over the coronavirus pandemic.
The union chief said that delays in accounting for absent kids allow them to drift further from the system and that the city should increase outreach.
“We should be doing that right now,” he said. “But again, we’re playing this game of ‘I’m not going to tell you what’s wrong because politically it might not work for us.’ ”