Schiller staff, students overcome chronic absenteeism

Seven years ago, Pittsburgh Schiller 6-8 had a major problem with chronic absenteeism.

More than one-third of the students — about 36% — at the school located in the North Side’s East Allegheny neighborhood were chronically absent, meaning they missed more than 10% of days during the school year.

“To be honest, I didn’t know how we were going to dig out from that,” Paula Heinzman, principal of Schiller, said in an interview at the school Tuesday morning.

The school brought in a guidance counselor who has worked hard with Ms. Heinzman since then and implemented various initiatives to improve attendance. Pittsburgh Public Schools officials now hold up Schiller’s work as an example of what schools can do to combat chronic absenteeism.

Chronic absenteeism has become a growing concern for city school officials as the rate has increased district-wide over the past few years. Officials point to the fact that students who do not show up to class don’t have the same access to educational opportunities as their peers.

District data at the halfway point this school year showed the chronic absence rate was at 28.1%, up from 25.4% in 2018-19 and 23.8% in 2017-18.

The chronic absence rate at Schiller so far this year is well below the district rate at 5.83%.

So what did staff do to alleviate the issue at the school?

“Anything and everything,” said Lana Shaftic, Schiller’s guidance counselor. “We just start with individual students, with what’s going on with them. Why are they

missing? What can we do to help?”

Chronic absence can be caused by a number of factors, including issues in the students’ homes. Younger students often rely on their parents to help them prepare for and make it to school every day.

Ms. Shaftic or someone from the school will call a student’s home whenever a student is absent and try to determine the cause. If there is a problem in the home, the school can inform parents about resources, provide items such as alarm clocks, or try to figure out an issue with busing.

“Communicating with the parents is, I believe, one of the most important things we do,” she said.

Ms. Shaftic started a “Strive for 95” initiative, which sets a goal for students to achieve 95% attendance. The district’s goal is for students to reach 90% attendance at the high school level, which meets the Pittsburgh Promise qualifications.

Overall attendance rates in the district so far this school year were at 91.4% — a drop from 92.3% in 2018-19 and 92.7% in 201718. Schiller’s attendance rate this school year is at 96.29%.

But the school also wants students to want to attend.

Schiller provides incentives for students with frequent attendance, such as more time with a teacher or in the gym. There are pizza parties for homerooms with perfect attendance.

Because Schiller students wear uniforms, another incentive is dressdown days. Students at the top of their class in attendance and other areas are allowed to dress down for a week.

Ms. Shaftic and Ms. Heinzman spoke about a sixth grade student who didn’t want to wear a uniform. The student has had perfect attendance, and because of the dress-down incentive she has not had to wear a uniform.

“She found a way to beat the system,” Ms. Heinzman said.

Students are not criticized when they are late because the school believes that discourages students from showing up at all if they are going to be tardy. Instead, students are taught to cheer for their classmates who arrive late to school.

Another initiative to help raise attendance are “be there buddies,” a program that matches students with chronic absence issues with a school staff member. The staff member will look at the student’s specific needs to help get the student to class more often.

According to district data, 233 students are enrolled at Schiller, the majority of whom are black, Hispanic or multiracial. More than 67% of students at the school come from economically disadvantaged homes.

Statistics show that minority students as well as students from economically disadvantaged households have a higher rate of chronic absenteeism than their peers who are white or are not economically disadvantaged.

There are plans for Ms. Shaftic to share the initiatives that have worked at Schiller with other staff at other city schools.

“We want to make sure that other schools know what’s happening here at Schiller, and there can maybe be some strategies that they can use,” district spokeswoman Ebony Pugh said.