In the aftermath of COVID-19, attendance rates dip at PCSD
July 14, 2023 at 4:31 p.m.
No matter how many innovative initiatives, excellent teachers and enhanced technology the Port Chester School District can provide, the only way to ensure students adequately advance into adulthood is if they’re physically in the classroom.
It’s a truth of education district administrators are all cognizant of, and while for the most part attendance records are sufficient at Port Chester Schools, in the last few years those trends have been shifting in an adverse direction.
“Our goal is to have all students here all the time. We’re doing everything we can to get that to happen. Anything below stellar attendance would make us, in general, concerned,” said Deputy Superintendent Dr. Colleen Carroll. “We know when they’re with us, they’re going to succeed more. Our concern is they need to be here so they can learn all the things we’re here to teach them so they can be successful.”
In the aftermath of COVID-19, absences across the U.S. have increased. According to Attendance Works, an education research group, chronic absenteeism has likely doubled in the country from pre-COVID figures. And the Port Chester School District—while it’s not at a point where alarm bells must be rung—is also seeing the phenomenon.
“It’s a conversation across the entire country, that for whatever reason after COVID, everyone’s attendance took a little dip,” said Carroll. “Some more than others, some grade levels more than others, some demographics more than others. But in general, everybody has concern about student attendance.”
New York State considers a student “chronically absent” if they miss 10% or more of the days school is in session during a given period, therefore making the benchmark for “target attendance” anything above 90%.
Historically, as several administrators described, attendance has not been problematic at Port Chester Schools. Typically, the average rate across the district hovered at around 95%.
But since COVID-19, that figure has dropped a few points.
Over the course of the 2022-23 school year, average districtwide attendance fluctuated between 87.9% and 94.2%. The higher end of that spectrum happened in September, which Carroll said is normal—families tend to prioritize coming home from travels by the beginning of the school year, and students are ambitious to be in the classroom.
By April, the average was 92.7%.
The lowest point came in December, which is also a common inclination. “Annually, that tends to dip because of families choosing to travel during that time,” Carroll said, referring to the 87.9% average rate as a reflection of the holidays. “We do explain to our families that we want the students here as much as possible, and they have to make choices based off of what their needs are.”
“That’s always been a struggle,” said King Street School Principal Sam Ortiz. “Those cold weather months are where they’re typically getting sick and it’s the months families like to travel. That’s a family’s choice and right to be able to do that. If they choose to travel, we can frown upon and try to talk to them out of it, but it’s ultimately their right to do so.”
In September, 3,512 Port Chester School District students achieved the benchmark target, while 981 were considered chronically absent. It was 2,445 students above the 90% while 2,061 were below in December, and by April the student split was 3,371 vs. 1,064.
Two pie charts illustrate how many Port Chester Schools students were considered “chronically absent” (orange) and achieving benchmark target attendance (blue) in April and December of the 2022-23 school year. Absenteeism is considered chronic if a student misses 10% or more of their school days.Similar ratios were seen across all the buildings. At the high school, 1,069 students were on target in April while 807 hit the benchmark in December, compared to the 456 and 743 students who were chronically absent during those respective months. At Edison Elementary School, for example, 303 students were above the 90% rate in April, compared to the 81 who were not. And in December, 193 pupils were on target while 194 were below the threshold.
Of those who failed to meet the target benchmark, Carroll said the “overwhelming majority” of cases straddled that 90% line—attending 88% or 89% of their school days. It’s because, ultimately, attendance rates are consistently monitored, and if a student’s absences become chronic or concerning, an entire response system is triggered.
Attending school far below the 90% benchmark “almost never happens because we can’t let it happen,” Carroll said. “It’s not like we just wait and track it. There’s an action plan.”
“We know exactly which families have attendance that’s less than 90 percent, and almost always, there’s a reason why,” she added, and later noted: “We’re obligated by New York State to inform the state, and even sometimes the Department of Social Services, if there are extreme attendance issues that don’t have medical reasons, and to work with the family to get them here.”
Every building has a community schools coordinator whose job, in part, is to work with families who struggle with attendance. Park Avenue Elementary School Principal Rosa Taylor described their “attendance team” as a full fledge of administrative and academic support designed to nip any issues in the bud quickly.
Those teams work with the families to figure out what is happening—helping them find support if they’re struggling to get their children to school while ensuring they know the consequences if too many days are missed, such as potentially becoming ineligible for moving up to the next grade.
Ultimately, Carroll said, attendance rates are just numbers—figures that help the district work with families on individual needs. However, it’s still an important statistic to keep satisfactory, as research directly correlates achievement with simply being there.
As quoted by the filmmaker Woody Allen: “Eighty percent of success is showing up.”
What’s with the dip?
Reflecting on attendance trends, Ortiz believes there’s a post-COVID element of heightened vigilance that can’t be ignored.
“I’m thinking about this with both perspectives; I’m a principal and father of two kids,” he said. “I think that in general, people are much more conscious now of not sending students to school when they feel sick.”
And it’s an awareness that goes both ways—school district staff have also grown accustomed to acting with extra caution and are more willing to send children home due to symptoms.
In a way, Ortiz posed, the district must consider what “good attendance means” in this day and age.
“On one hand, attendance might be down because they’re not coming to school sick. And if that’s the reason, then we might not want to raise attendance,” he said. “It’s a catch-22.”
Attendance data, as it’s currently reported by the district, accounts for absences that are both excused and unexcused—while sick days are considered justifiable, an absence is unexcused when there’s no reasoning behind a student missing or when a family is out on travels.
Taylor emphasized that the schools focus on the unexcused absences, while noting it’s become more common for parents/guardians to neglect calling the school when their child is out.
“A lot of absences are because parents don’t call to say the child is sick. Sometimes they don’t tell us if there’s an appointment they’re going to,” she said. “We have to do a better job at communicating that to parents, making sure they’re able to contact us and call us.”
As students get older and have more autonomy, Port Chester High School Principal Luke Sotherden said social-emotional health is strongly hypothesized to be a leading contributor of dropping attendance rates—whether it be the entire day or an increase in class skipping.
The value of social-emotional learning has always been held high by the district, Carroll said, but over the last few years it’s become more important than ever. “And we don’t think that’s going to change, students’ needs in that capacity,” she added.
Not only are students still feeling the impact of the pandemic which struck during crucial developmental years, but they’re consistently faced with global angst. Pupils aren’t immune to the headlines, Sotherden said.
“If you look at the world…there’s a war in Eastern Europe, we just went through a pandemic, there’s civil unrest, political parties at each other’s throats,” he listed. “When you see that as a kid, you feel like the world is falling apart and that makes me think about the social-emotional needs and trying to address those. That has to do with the choices of not coming to class.”
When the world feels hopeless, it’s easy to surmise that skipping a few classes isn’t a big deal. However, administrators emphasized that is not the case—assessment scores are directly impacted by low attendance.
Smaller, yet notable, explanations may account for a few unfavorable attendance statistics as well, Carroll said. For example, there have been a few cases of students leaving the district without telling the schools, therefore not attending class while their absence data swells.
Every family and student, the administrators discussed, has unique circumstances that speak to their attendance priorities and trend. While the district aims to work with them on addressing any issues as they come up, it also has a few strategies coming down the pipeline that may help.
Plans to get students in their seats
With every problem, Carroll believes there is a short-, medium-, and long-term solution.
In spring of the 2022-23 school year, administrative “data huddles” at Port Chester Schools had dedicated conversations about attendance trends. And with those discussions, Carroll believes several current initiatives the district is embarking on will by nature also address heightened absences.
The long-term solution involves sustainably addressing the increased burden of social-emotional needs by putting policies in place that will improve the experience for students in years to come.
Sotherden said, in part, that involves amplifying their mission to make students “career and college ready.” If pupils are guided toward a future they’re excited about, they’ll want to dedicate time to school.
“Having that direction will help you think less about the world falling apart and to be more focused on your goals,” he said. “To find a little more purpose day to day. We’ve been doing this all along, but post-pandemic there’s been so many distractions in the world around us. We constantly try to get better at helping kids find that post-secondary plan and connecting them with pathways.”
The district’s new addition of a director of guidance, a position created in the 2023-24 budget, makes strides in that direction, Carroll said. That role will be key in addressing social-emotional learning and future-planning initiatives.
“Having that position, we really do believe we’ll see a positive effect long term on student attendance, wanting to be in school, feeling comfortable in school, feeling it’s a safe haven for them,” she said. “So even if they’re emotionally feeling anxiety, they want to be in school to help them with that, rather than being nervous about being here.”
The district is also investing in new software called ParentSquare, which is slated to launch this fall, to improve communication with families—an initiative that Carroll sees as a medium- and short-term solution to attendance struggles.
At Port Chester High School, Sotherden held focus groups with students during the 2022-23 school year to “go to the source” on figuring out how to prevent students from cutting class. Unsurprisingly, they reported that they’d be unlikely to do it if their parents knew.
ParentSquare will let the district inform parents immediately if their child isn’t in class.
“So, a student is aware that their parent will be informed if they’re not coming, and that communication will help students realize their accountability to be here and make better choices if it’s a choice that they’re making to not be in school,” Carroll said. “That software should help us greatly. It’s also good at tracking student attendance very granularly, unlike systems we have now. We have the information, but it’s harder for us to access it and sort it. With that improvement, we can know faster and better about what’s going on.”
The district’s standardization of various processes will also be a benefit, Carroll said. Currently, they’re looking to ensure absence recording practices are uniform at all the schools, and she believes the centralized registration implementation that they’re focusing on this year will help make sure all families are aware of attendance and district-exiting policies.
And, of course, the ongoing goal has always been engagement. If a student likes being in class, they’ll be there.
“How do we make learning more fun and engaging and have students connect to the why? We talk a lot about student agency and student voice in their learning, because that gives them a connection to it,” Carroll said. “You can never have too much of that, it’s a continued conversation. Student feedback here is ‘we like going to school,’ in general. ‘We like our teachers, we like school,’ and we’re going to continue to build on that.”
Moving forward is about keeping tabs on the situation, Carroll said. New policies and practices are coming into place this year, and the administrative team is eager to see the impact.
Then, they plan to huddle again to discuss the numbers, make any tweaks that may be needed and continue brainstorming ways to ensure students are getting in their seats.
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