1 of 5 students absent
In an unprecedented year, number of missed school days has risen drastically
STAMFORD — One of every five students in Stamford this school year has missed at least 10 percent of classes.
That’s one of many eyecatching statistics among information from Stamford Public Schools that shows the percentage of chronically absent students in each of the district’s buildings.
The numbers are even more dramatic when looking at certain populations. The rate of chronic absenteeism among English learners, for example, is 43 percent across the district. English learners are students who do not yet communicate or learn effectively in English.
In some schools, such as Toquam Magnet Elementary School and K.T. Murphy Elementary School, the rate of chronically absent English learners is 63 percent.
Jennifer Gomez, a community organizer for the nonprofit Building One Community, said the pandemic has hit the immigrant community hard. B1C is an organization that helps connect immigrants in Stamford to a number of services.
“Many of our families have to go to work, so they’re stuck leaving children with babysitters who are not necessarily trained in early childhood education,” Gomez said, explaining some of the challenges facing families.
She said many families have also experienced technical issues at home.
Gomez said a number of parents have told staff that the Wi-Fi hotspots they were given by the school system are not working properly, or they are unable to successfully use them. Some have resorted to using their phones as a hotspot, which is a less than ideal
solution when you have multiple people logged in at once.
“And that’s happening across the board,” she said.
Gomez said many immigrants have struggled with setting up technology at home for their children to adequately keep up with their studies.
“If you grew up in household without Wi-Fi, adapting to this form of schooling is a challenge,” she said.
Olympia Della Flora, associate superintendent of school development, said the district has worked to help families get internet access at home as well as provided them with devices.
But challenges still exist. For instance, Della Flora said, some families might need additional hotspots if multiple children are using it at the same time.
Toquam fared the worst in total absentee rates, notwithstanding the Anchor at Harbor Landing school, which deals with a student population that has medical issues and is at risk of not graduating.
In total, four out of 10 Toquam students has missed a tenth of their class days or more.
Research from nonprofit organizations like Attendance Works shows that students in poorer neighborhoods are four times more likely to be chronically absent than students from other socioeconomic backgrounds since those students are disproportionately affected by unstable housing, unreliable transportation and a lack of access to health care.
Those issues have all been exacerbated by COVID.
Last year at the same time, the district’s percentage of chronic absenteeism was 12.5 percent.
After English learners, the populations with the largest percentage of absenteeism are special education students, as well as Hispanic and Black students. About 29 percent of all three of those demographics are characterized as being chronically absent.
Meanwhile, almost 10 percent of Asian students are consistently absent, compared to 7 percent of white students, both decreases from last school year.
Some schools posted low absentee numbers. Scofield Magnet Middle School had an absentee rate of just 2 percent, while the Academy of Information Technology & Engineering and Strawberry Hill School both had a rate of 6 percent.
Anchor at Harbor Landing had the biggest absentee percentages, with 51 percent of students at the school having missed at least 10 percent of classes. The majority of the school’s EL students, 63 percent, and Hispanic students, 62 percent, are chronically absent.
Bridget Fox, president of Stamford Cradle to Career, said COVID has created added challenges for families, particularly those with fewer resources.
“I think it’s yet another example of what COVID has revealed of exacerbating already existing inequities,” she said.
She said many parents are working multiple jobs, which causes a domino affect that can impact their children’s studies.
“When you’re working multiple jobs, it’s very challenging to have your kids online learning,” she said.
Quarantining has also impacted the numbers as students who tested positive for COVID-19, or were deemed to be close contacts of someone with the virus, and had to stay home for two weeks. In all, about 1,200 people in the school system have had to quarantine at some point this school year. That figure includes students and school staff.
For students in the hybrid program — who attend school every other day and learn remotely on other days — that meant multiple missed days of instruction, even if they were excused.
Stamford’s figures use the state metric for chronic absenteeism, which considers an excused absence a missed day.
But there are also some students who have not been engaged with instruction at all. Della Flora said some schools have started to do home visits to those students in an effort to find out what is causing the absences.
Many situations, Della Flora said, are out of the district’s control.
“You can have kids that come into school every day in hybrid, but they’re missing remote (days) because they don’t have the support of someone helping them,” she said.