HOLYOKE — Holyoke School Committee member Mildred Lefebvre wants the district to take another look at why students are chronically absent.
With the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education recently launching its campaign to raise awareness around the importance of school attendance, Lefebvre wants to have a game plan in place when it comes to addressing the problem in Holyoke Public Schools.
On Monday, after evaluating a recent report showing absences in the district have been on the rise in recent months, Lefebvre requested an indexing of reasons for absences to improve the committee’s work being done around the problem.
“We need a breakdown to justify why chronic absenteeism is happening,” Lefebvre said.
Looking at partial hospitalizations, Lefebvre said, she would like to know what the percentage of chronic absences stem from medical or mental health needs.
Chronic absenteeism is one measure of accountability that the Department of Education uses to determine district performance, and Lefebvre said she is concerned that all reasons are labeled unexcused under the state’s rules. DESE defines a student chronically absent after missing at least 10% of days enrolled, or about 18 days, regardless of the reason.
Chronic absenteeism grew during the pandemic and has not returned to pre-pandemic rates, according to DESE. In the 2022-2023 school year, about one out of every four students in the state missed 18 days or more of school.
In some instances, students could be on a medical leave for behavioral health reasons and be enrolled in a partial hospitalization program, which could range from five to 30 days, Lefebvre said.
“The chance is very slim to none that it is not going to happen again in that school year. It is more than likely that something else is going to occur, and now that child falls into chronic absenteeism,” Lefebvre said.
Lefebvre wanted to know what the School Committee and the Department of Education could put in place that would provide opportunities for students to continue their education when they are out for long, unpreventable periods of time.
Student board representative Evan Kennedy said mental health and burnout are big challenges that students face.
Kennedy questioned if school guidance counselors had the bandwidth to support existing social emotional challenges.
“We have to figure out why students don’t want to come. Is something happening at school … at home? If someone is being bullied and reporting it and nothing happens, that student is not going to want to come to school,” Kennedy said.
Erin Brunelle, vice chair of the committee, said a breakdown of the causes of truancy will help the district develop a game plan and strategize. Brunelle said another look at the district’s policy on COVID-19 also would be beneficial.
“That is not the district’s fault. This isn’t that kids are missing school, because they just don’t want to come to school,” Brunelle said.
Anthony Soto, superintendent of schools and state receiver, said he will work with the district’s data team to produce a monthly report that also outlines data on reasons for chronic absenteeism.
Soto said the state’s accountability measures have changed, and chronic absenteeism holds more weight than before, in an effort to rally school districts to do more about improving student attendance.
Ward 4 committee member Gloria Caballero-Roca noted that the recent data revealed alarming numbers of students cutting classes, who were generally disruptive and had used offensive language. How then can the committee use the same data to turn to community partners for help addressing the population of high need students, she asked.
“We can talk about the numbers, but we really have to do major interventions socially in our city,” she said.
